AI Re-Imagined

Posted on 01/01/2025 by Yvonne Rogers

Android has just announced its latest new tech innovation combining AI and Extended Reality. The idea behind this latest mashup is to enable us to don a pair of fashionable looking glasses that when powered up can understand what we want to do (our intentions) and the world around us so that we might be able ‘get things done in entirely new ways’. That fired up my imagination. What might those be? To suggest the best way to run errands so that we can get them done without hassle? To propose a new way to walk through a familiar woodland to see a flower in blossom we might never have noticed? To recommend a new coffee shop nearby where there is a lovely space to sit?

The article continues by suggesting reimagining how to use the new AI to do existing digital tasks. The example given is one we have been able to do for many years – that is exploring the world by using Google Maps but in new immersive ways, soaring above cities and landmarks. I remember being wowed the first time I explored my street and other places using a desktop VR app and then with a VR headset whizzing over London at breakneck speed. How might this be reimagined? I guess we could experience being even more immersed so that we can fly as if we were like an eagle flying high over mountains. The question this raises is how far can the technology go to making the real and the virtual experience indistinguishable? The mind boggles.

One of the stumbling blocks with trying to make extended reality ever more lifelike is how best to interact with it and the world. Gesturing, pinching and pointing at thin air have been used with varying degrees of success. It seems these might get easier for us to learn and more natural to use when we want to bring up some relevant information that will overlay where we are. For example, it could show various details about a pair of running shoes we are looking at in response to a slight curl of a finger. However, it still needs to read our fingers, from what is a twitch to what is a gesture. Perhaps in the future it will be able to read our mind so well we wont need to use our digits anymore.

This kind of all-seeing AI could learn to know what, when and where to mention things we are interested in but never knew we needed or wanted to know, as we go about our everyday lives. It could even remind us at opportune times of what we need to do – an ever ready assistant. What if we could do different things with the tech rather than simply getting everyday things done more effectively or efficiently?

Being the beginning of a new year, many tech writers are envisioning how AI will reshape society for better or for worse. The new buzz term is ‘Agentic AI’ – where the AI shifts from thinking to doing and, in so doing, enables our tasks and work to be done more efficiently, effectively and faster. John Naughton, who writes for the Guardian, for example, says that 2025 will be the year of AI agents that will leverage LLMs to work out what our human intentions are and then break these down into steps that they can help us perform at home or work. So, instead of asking Alexa or ChatGPT to answer our queries, a new fangled agent AI will be proactive, learning, adapting and predicting what we need.

These re-imaginings of our everyday and working lives are all well and good and will no doubt go a long way to transform society. But what if we were to dream about how we might use the latest AI and wearable tech to do new and different things? For example, imagine if we started creating new kinds of supertools that could help us with complex and protracted decision-making while dealing with uncertainty. The AI would work with us, not for us, empowering and supercharging how we think. It could also be designed to help us feel more confident about which avenues to pursue in life. Imagine, too, if it could help us make better decisions when under stress, for example, providing a chatbot-type ‘mirror’ that could be looked at periodically to reflect on how our moods are impacting our choices. We might become more self aware leading us to overcome our blind sightedness and our biases. The potential benefits for society are huge if we could only tap into this potential.

My 2025 vision is for new combinations of AI and ER tech to emerge that can engage with humans and each other in more diverse ways, pointing out new directions, and synthesizing different perspectives, leading to new insights and breakthroughs. Just imagine if we could develop AI that has some imagination itself, helping us to imagine what John Lennon imagined over 50 years ago:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Happy New Year!

Changed Images

Posted on 04/08/2023 by Yvonne Rogers

AI is being applied to all manner of tasks that humans have always done and which over time are proving to be better than them. One of the first applications was in radiology where machine learning was used to classify medical images to determine if they were cancerous. The method has become so good now that it is faster, cheaper and more accurate than even highly trained radiographers.

Since then, it has been used to classify all kinds of images. The latest, according to The Guardian, is its appearance in the online dating world, where it is being put to the test to decide which photo of someone’s mugshot makes them look the most attractive. The question this raises is how does the AI know? It is quite different from determining if a dark patch on an X-ray image is a lesion.

Come to think of it, how do humans know which photo of themselves to select when it comes to showing themselves off in the best light? It seems such an art form. Recently, I had about 100 photos taken of me by a professional photographer who made me pose in various ways, from leaning against a glass wall to standing in a corridor. I force-smiled my way through all the clickety clicks and cajouling, feeling mightily awkward. Of the ones the photographer showed me, none looked particularly flattering. But being highly trained in this skill, she was able to pick the four she thought I looked good in and asked me to choose one from those for the website it was intended for. I found it really hard and would have appreciated some AI to help me.

It got me thinking, what makes one image look better than another one? Is it the lighting, the way the eyes are open, the size of a smile, the way a head is tilted? And so on? I am sure the AI would be able to work it out but not know how it did it.

Meanwhile, generative AI is being developed to help people write about themselves in a more enticing and personalized way. For example, the dating site Match Group has been using it to “eliminate awkwardness” when dating online. Let the AI tell a few white lies rather than the human, who as we well know will often ‘lie’ about their age, interests, and what they are looking for in a partner to improve their chances of getting a catch.

Touching up photos to make someone look better has been around for ages – especially if they are to appear on the front cover of a magazine. Nothing new or wrong with that. But the photo doing the social media rounds today is intended to put someone in a bad light rather than in a good one. The photo in question is of a girl with pink hair looking askew at the British prime minister Rishi Sunak who has just poured a pint at a beer festival – showing he is a man of the people. The original image had been ever so slightly manipulated so as to change the facial expression of the girl from appearing disinterested (one on the right) to dismissive (one on the left) – in the blink of a few pixels being switched around. It did not need AI to do that – anyone could have done that using Photoshop but the furore it has unleashed about AI-enhanced images is quite astonishing. I thought the photo was quite funny just like the AI-generated image of the pope wearing a puffer coat, which, clearly, he has never worn. We all like a bit of harmless mischief, seeing the bizarre, the funny, and the hilarious – especially if it is of a famous person. However, the ‘beef’ in all the comments and concern of the pint pulling image is that it is politically motivated and could be the start of a bigger misinformation campaign. Some even think it is a threat to the democratic process. The thin edge of the wedge.

Distorting images for political gain is a century’s old trick. For example, the infamous photo that was used by the Tories over 40 years ago, entitled “Labour isn’t working” is a case in point. The image depicts a snaking unemployment queue linking up outside of an unemployment office. It was blown up as a full-scale poster and sent a powerful message that if the Labour party got elected the dole queue would get much worse than it was at the time. Powerful stuff. The image itself was manipulated using an old-fashioned technique. Only 20 volunteers showed up for the photoshoot and so the photographer took lots of photos of the same people and then stitched them all together. If you look hard enough you can see the same people appearing throughout the queue. From a distance, you would never have guessed. The poster was placed on billboards and buses all over the UK and this pervasive presence became etched in people’s minds no doubt nudging them to vote one way rather than the other.

It wasn’t the photo technique that was the problem but the way it was used to distort the message and be the subject of misinformation.

This kind of trick of making something appear much larger than it actually is, can be done now in a matter of minutes using a contemporary generative AI tool. In my mind the focus of concern should not be about the wizardry of what can be achieved with AI tools now but with the advertisers and the politicians who connive to using them to deceive and distort the masses.

Beyond Human

Posted on 02/05/2023 by Yvonne Rogers

An interview with Geoff Hinton in the New York Times this week made me stop and think about where AI is heading next. The last few months have been a bit of a roller coaster since the public was given access to the various generative text and image tools, such as chatGPT, Bard, Dalle-2 and Midjourney which has resulted in millions of people trying them out. Quite remarkably, it has unleashed unprecedented levels of joy, amazement and incredulity from all walks of life at what they can do when prompted by us, humans. It has also been matched by many people worrying about how the AI tools will replace millions of jobs while turning our children into cheats, by using them to do their homework. Not since Google search and Facebook came to the fore has there been so much excited talk across the globe about what a new tech can do for society.

I have always been a glass half full person and start by looking at the benefits and opportunities of a new technology. Instead of seeing them ending up making children lazy, I see them helping them learn how to write and code. I see them empowering many others in their work – for example, enabling clinicians to see more patients by summarising and automatically composing reports from their consultations with their patients. Across the board, it is taking the drudgery out of many of our mundane knowledge-based tasks. It can also spark our imaginations to do more and differently. Writing new kinds of plays, books, scripts and so on.

But then something Geoff said in the middle of his interview made me see the future of AI from the dark side, for a change. The first worry that got me thinking was when he talked about there being ever more powerful tools that can be used by evil, malevolent and greedy people for their own ends. The so-called bad actors of the world (although personally I don’t like that term as it used to refer to people who are not very good at acting on stage but now been generalised to mean malicious rather than incompetent people). Scam porn, fake news, fake videos, fake voices, fake claims, etc. could become mainstream, being used in all sorts of unpleasant ways to extort us. Moreover, it is already starting to get messy; being more difficult to know what is real and what is fabricated. While we have all gotten used to getting email scams and more recently deepfakes we may find it more annoying, confusing and scary when they become commonplace – where videos, images and stories are made about us which are untrue but which become increasingly difficult to disprove. Our sense of reality will be turned upside down and inside out if we are not careful.

The second and perhaps more worrying concern is not knowing what the new AI tools might be used for or do, God forbid, on their own volition as they become ever more ‘intelligent’. What happens when say, chatbots, start to learn from each other? Geoff poignantly pointed out:

“… it’s as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learnt something, everybody automatically knew it. And that’s how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person.”

Yikes! It could unleash a new generation of killer robots that could easily get in the wrong human hands causing unprecedented destruction. And other unthinkable things.

I reminded myself that this has always been the case with manmade (sic) weapons – whether it is chemical warfare, machine guns, nuclear arms, and so on. We still see terrible acts and atrocities being committed all the time. But will the new generative AI escalate man’s propensity to destroy life with the latest technological means available and make it easier and more shocking to do so?

The sensible course of action is for societies across the globe to put stops and deterrents in place. The politicians and the officials are indeed starting to discuss what to do. But is it possible or realistic for governments to make sure safeguards, regulations and policies can be developed and implemented in order to prevent or reduce AI from being used for bad? Will the exponential advances in AI mean that the goalposts keep moving making it is difficult to keep up?

Returning to my more comfortable glass half full lens, I think about how the unprecedented speed and uptake of the latest AI technological advances could enable us to make more rapid and more profound scientific and medical discoveries, such as finding cures and ways of preventing awful illnesses, such as dementia, Parkinson’s and cancer. Could we also use them to help society detect and even prevent all manner of crimes before they happen, including terrorism, people trafficking and money laundering? And wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was possible for AI to solve the problems it creates?

The bottom line is one of balance. Is it possible that the new AI kids on the block can be put to more good use than to bad use – now the genie is out of the bottle?

The two inserted images were created by DALL·E

The Metaverse

Posted on 25/04/2022 by Yvonne Rogers

Why is there so much hype about the Metaverse these days? It has even taken over from AI as the hottest tech topic. Last week when I asked Matthew Ball, the author of a forthcoming book about it, if I could take a peak inside he told me unfortunately no since the publishers want to keep it under wraps until it actually comes out in print. According to the blurb on Amazon’s site about the book, the Metaverse “is suddenly everywhere…It is a persistent, 3D, virtual world―a network of interconnected experiences and devices, tools and infrastructure, far beyond mere virtual reality. And it is poised to revolutionize every industry and function, from finance and healthcare to payments, consumer products, and even sex work. The internet will no longer be at arm’s length; instead, it will surround us, with our lives, labor, and leisure taking place inside the metaverse.”

That is hype to the max!

No wonder everyone is talking about it. Only today, I heard a radio show scaremongering the audience about all the potential dangers children face when entering the Metaverse – from being bullied to being groomed. However, just like AI, the idea of the Metaverse has actually been around for a while. Its earliest incarnation was in the form of virtual worlds, like Second Life, where people could create online spaces to socialize, learn, and hang out in. The virtual worlds were represented in 3D graphics which were navigated and experienced via a desktop. People could fly around and walk through walls to get from one place to another. I remember on my first visit, ‘flying’ to a virtual lecture in a massive stadium that resembled the Coliseum in Rome. All rather strange and fun for a while but nothing to get really excited or worried about. So why now?

In the early 2020s, Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) took it upon himself to talk up the Metaverse as if it was the next big thing since sliced bread. One of his ambitions was to make the next generation of virtual worlds feel truly immersive. The step change from the older virtual worlds, like Second Life, was to radically change how people experience and interact in the Metaverse. Not through a desktop display, but by donning a VR headset and using the connected VR touch controllers to move their avatar’s arms around in the virtual world just like they do in physical world. This more extensive form of embodiment is what is envisioned will provide the compelling immersive experience.

This image shows one version of Zuckerberg’s vision of the Metaverse. Three avatars are enjoying the outdoors, moving their arms and hands around, as if they are together, even though they are apart in the physical world. However, look closely and you notice something slightly odd about the avatars. They don’t have any legs! The reason for this it seems is largely down to technical limitations. In contrast to the VR controllers which can map onto arm and hand movements relatively well in real time, the sensors and controllers which are currently available that can be placed on someone’s legs, are not able to represent someone’s leg and feet movements in VR nearly as well. It is often the case that obstacles can get in the way (such as someone’s belly), resulting in movements of the legs being obscured and so not able to be detected accurately. Because of this, VR headsets like Oculus, were not designed to capture the whole body of a person. Time will tell whether these kinds of occlusion problems can be overcome. You never know, in the future, we might see people putting on a whole body suit (like a Spiderman outfit) rather than just a VR headset when entering the Metaverse.

Meanwhile Second Life has become commercialized. People can go there to shop for clothes and gadgets. The first ever Meta fashion week took place in Second Life last month. Even though the model avatars are impressive in how they move they still seem to be floating in air rather than walking down the catwalk. After the show, skins of the outfits that were modelled on the virtual agents could be purchased with Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Once purchased, people could then dress up their own avatars and parade them in Second Life.

Instead of using human models some designers like Dolce & Gabbana decided to use cartoon cats to show off their skins. One of the reasons is they look cool. Another is they avoid the problems of trying to emulate a human model and so don’t have to worry about how lifelike the model avatars appear. And no cats are harmed in the process. It is fantasy world all over again!

TikTok Food

Posted on 03/01/2022 by Yvonne Rogers

TikTok has been around since 2016 and caught on like wildfire amongst young people all round the world, as quickly as Facebook did when it first took off. It is fast and furious, and because of this terribly addictive, leaving you wanting more. Essentially, it is a social media platform primarily targeted at GenZ, who spend hours making and viewing their’s and each other’s short, snappy and slickly-edited videos. Each TikTok video typically lasts less than a minute. After clicking on a random video, the viewer can easily find themselves immersed in watching hundreds of other videos from that person’s account and then before they know it are onto someone else’s videos. An hour or more can easily pass by just as the videos do.

The choice of topics covered on TikTok is endless, but most videos are about the stuff that young people are into these days, including dance moves, fashion, jokes, adorable pets, lip synching and slapstick pranks. They also include skills that traditionally most kids have not shown much interest in, such as cooking. I was listening to The Food Programme on the radio the other day which just so happened to be featuring the growing trend amongst young people watching TikTokers demonstrating how to cook, that is quick and easy, without fuss, while looking yummy. Collectively called #FoodTok, videos in this genre have been viewed many billions of times. The mind boggles.

One of the people mentioned in the programme was Poppycooks, who has made a name for herself by specialising in how to cook the humble spud. Her video of how to make roast potatoes went viral which she then followed up with several other recipes of cooking potatoes, from crispy to crunchy to fried to mashed. She was really clever in working out how to keep viewers coming back for more, by adding a new video each day of the advent calendar, this Christmas just gone, comprising 25 recipes. The best was left to the 25^th December, salty, super-thin, mouth-watering chips. They are indeed moreish. Poppy also has a cheeky look, adding a pinch of humour every now and again. You can’t but help fall for her and her style of cooking. The sound of her breaking open and biting into a crunchy potato is mouthwatering – and would make most people want to peel some potatoes and get cooking.

Like with other social media platforms, the secret to which TikTok videos become viral is largely down to a combination of algorithms, appeal and advertising. The trick is working out how to sustain interest. Many people may have a one hit wonder while a few go on to make a career out of it. Poppy, for example, has nailed it. She now has over 2 million followers. But staying high in the leagues of TikTok influencers creates huge pressure. The FoodTokers have to keep conjuring up new recipes they can show off in consistently tantalising ways always under 60 seconds! It is an amazing skill. Unlike the celebs of yesteryear, who have become famous through wealth, being in the know, being a looker, and/or having a huge talent, these youngsters can rise to the top through their deft video-making and editing skills, making things look easy and super cool. They may only discover they have a real talent to entertain when beginning to create the videos. And literally anyone with a smartphone/camera can bubble up and become a star over night. This is one of the joys of this media – its serendipity.

Sometimes, people experience autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) when watching FoodTok videos, which essentially is a tingling body sensation that starts on the scalp and then progresses down the back of the neck and spine. For some people, this kind of sensation can be triggered by listening to crunching, slurping and other whacky sounds. SamSeats, for example, has made an amazing video of many tingling sounds associated with preparing a fancy ratatouille dish. The sounds include ice cubes being dropped in a bowl, a knife slicing through an assortment of veggies and the rapid and fine chopping of garlic cloves and sprigs of herbs. It is music to the ears and makes you want to watch and listen to the video again. Each time you do, you hear something new. The second time I viewed it, I heard the glugging sound of oil being poured from a bottle and the frying of onions. Such food performances, speeded up to fast-beat tempos, are simply sumptuous. I can see how addictive they are (although sadly I never experienced the ASMR sensation of tingling).

And now I am tempted to upload to TikTok my old fashioned YouTube video (10 years old now) of ‘a plate of sizzling food’ being served up. Here it is: sizzle sizzle.

(Image of roast potatoes from lianaskitchen.co.uk)

Remote Nurturing

Posted on 16/05/2020 by Yvonne Rogers

Many of my friends have taken to gardening during lockdown, making raised beds and planting whatever seeds they can get their hands on. Just like the craze for baking and bread-making, there is now one for growing your own food. The other day, my neighbour, Julie, proudly listed the latest seeds she has pricked and planted in our new communal street garden, including peas, potatoes, runner beans, borlotti beans, spinach, garlic, carrots and beetroot. We can all take it in turns to go and help nurture them, weeding, watering or adding more plants, although one neighbour is definitely the head gardener.

It got me thinking how could we could capitalize on these enterprising green finger efforts to make them even more of a shared event, where potentially hundreds or thousands of people could take part to grow one mega veggie patch or a series of connected gardens. Wouldn’t it be amazing if those who don’t have a garden could feel as connected to the earth as those who have actual gardens? As I wondered about this possibility, I was reminded of a project from many years ago when the internet was just getting off the ground called Telegarden. Anyone could log on to the site where you could watch a circular garden with a robot arm. You could also sign up to control the robot who would plant flowers and then water them. It was created by artists Ken Goldberg and Joseph Santarromana from California. It was kept alive for 9 years and during that time 10,000’s people connected. It was a fusion of tech and nature. The idea that a physical garden could be operated by users online was considered by the artists as being “the most absurd”. Now, in lockdown it does not seem quite as absurd.

How about we try to recreate a more up-to-date version of Telegarden (call it Lockdown Garden) in empty school yards, university campuses, national parks, meadows, or even on the land that people own but don’t have a use for. School children, grandparents, single people, young and old people, bored people, well anyone really, could log on, pay a small fee and select from a catalogue of fruit and veg seeds to grow. Drones and automated robots could work in tandem nurturing the garden, weeding and picking the veggies, that could then be donated to people in need. Our favourite TV gardening presenters, like Carol Klein and Monty Don in the UK, could judge the best kept Lockdown gardens and the most crazy, beautiful, bountiful and so on. And of course there could be disasters filmed by the drones that could keep the viewers and growers hooked, like the robots overwatering, marrows growing to be the size of a small car, and robots refusing to cooperate. Perhaps I am getting a bit carried away here but it would be a fun challenge for all those makers and engineering students who are now at a loose end.

Standing Out

Posted on 14/12/2019 by Yvonne Rogers

Much has been written about the power of a label to make the object it is attached to stand out. Popular techniques used include striking images, bright colours, ironic slogans and unusual designs. The trick is to make the label grab someone’s attention – be it online, in a store or in a catalogue. The competition for customer’s eyeballs is particularly marked for wine where there are thousands of brands vying for their attention.

On a recent trip to Western Australia, I visited Tylers, a small family-run vineyard who market their wine through a fun form of ‘selfie-labelling’. Visitors can pose for a photo which is then made into a label that can be stuck onto a bottle of wine they have purchased – transforming it into their very own personalized wine. All for no extra cost.

The vineyard was very low key, comprising a small farm shack where the tastings took place; the inside and outside of which were covered from top to bottom in previous visitors’ wine labels. Located in one corner of the shack was a dusty old PC, that was used to design the labels and a printer that kept getting jammed. It felt like stepping back in time to the halcyon 80s computing days. Some of my colleagues, who I was with on the wine tour, immediately saw how they could improve the tech. But for me, I thought its ‘old fustiness’ simply added to the place’s nostalgic charm.

Another recent innovation – also from Australia – has been to use augmented reality (AR) to make printed historical characters appearing on the wine label come alive – as if they were actually talking to you. The brand ‘19 Crimes’ has stolen the market on this; presenting a line-up of british convicts who were sent to Australia back in the 18th Century, and who regale their stories for why they were incarcerated and how they then subsequently became colonists. The AR characters celebrate the rebellious spirit of the exiled men and women who then went onto forge the national spirit in Australia. It is intriguing and atmospheric listening to their stories . Rather than using AR as part of a game, such as Pokeman Go does, it has been used in an adult context, bringing the story behind the wine label alive in a playful, mysterious and slightly uncanny way.

Placing labels on people, however, has a very different impact. The compulsory yellow badges that were required to be worn by Jewish people during the Nazi era were intended to stigmatize, humiliate, segregate and control them. Quite abominable. Nowadays, labels in the form of badges are used to signal implicit messages to the general public, asking for understanding and acts of kindness – for example, politely requesting someone give up their seat on the London Underground if they see a woman wearing a badge saying ‘baby on board’.

In Japan, a label has even been created for female staff to be worn when working in a store to indicate to other staff they are menstruating. The badge is adorned with a cartoon character called Miss Period. The underlying message is intended to enable other staff to feel OK helping the wearer and for the wearer to be excused if they feel the need to have a longer break. To many outside of Japan, it may seem somewhat strange and a little demeaning, to see someone wearing a Miss Period badge.

For shoppers not in the know, it might be read as saying, ‘I am having my period now’. But what is the customer to do? Should they avoid the sales assistant? Say something to them or other? Without any guidance, it can be awkward for the general public to know what to do or say on seeing such a badge being worn. In this context, the image is clear and rather cartoon-like, but the message less so, resulting in both the wearer and the observer feeling uncomfortable.

Another form of product labelling is one that informs consumers about something. One such initiative that is doing the rounds again is called PACE – which stands for ‘Physical Activity Calorie Equivalent or Expenditure’. The underlying rationale is that a label is placed on food or drink packaging to specify how much exercise would be needed to burn off the calories, if it was consumed – for example when eating a burger or drinking a can of coke. Some people may take the number literally and spend 40 minutes on a treadmill to earn their drink. Others might think twice about having extra fries or a muffin, when reading how much exercise is needed to burn it off. It might just nudge them to refrain.

An ongoing debate is whether this kind of information is more effective at making people change their behaviour than simply stating the number of calories. Does a calorific number (e.g. 600) or a type of activity (e.g. a 40 minute run) increase the likelihood of taking more exercise and or eating less? A recent study by the University of Loughborough has suggested that people selected about 65 calories less per meal when their food was labelled using the Pace system. That is nearly a whopping saving of 200 calories a day. It is not clear, however, whether its impact also increased their physical activity in the manner subscribed.

I also wonder if it might make people think that as I have saved on eating less during the day by having an apple rather than a chocolate bar, I have earned myself an extra glass of wine in the evening. When it comes to Christmas dinners, I can’t see many saying no to a second helping of homemade trifle and then hoofing it down the park for a 2 hour run.

Opera Moments

Posted on 22/10/2017 by Yvonne Rogers

The other day, I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s new exhibition “Opera: Passion, Power and Politics”. This latest extravaganza explores the context, history and origins of seven great operas in seven magnificent cities, from Venice to Leningrad, where they were originally performed and for which they are now renowned for their operatic heritage. It has been curated as a journey through opera, full of suspense, the visitor never quite knowing what to expect next.

Quality headphones on, my friend and I were initially led into a passage where a beautiful aria burst forth into our ears. My friend started grinning from ear-to-ear and went straight into ‘the zone’. After our visit, she told me how the first few lines of the aria had triggered a Proustian moment, taking her right back to a poignant time in her life when she had first heard it. I looked on enviously while being distracted by trying to get my headphones to sit more comfortably on my head. It proved more difficult, however, for me to be transported. So I left my friend in her element and wandered into the next darkened room, where I was taken back to 17th Century Venice, which is where it all began. There were various exhibits in the room intended to give you a taster of the passion, the politics and the power – that had been crafted and selected to convey iconic aspects, including original music scores, costumes, and old instruments.

For me, the multimedia experience was largely about the music playing in my ears rather than the visuals confronting my eyes. I tried to focus on the artefacts in front of me and read accompanying materials but it proved quite difficult. The sounds in my ears had my undivided attention for most of the time. Sometimes, I managed to synch what I was looking at with what I was hearing. Other times, I simply closed my eyes, wandered around and listened. I barely noticed the other people milling around the space or how crowded it was. They appeared almost like solo ghosts coming in and out of focus. No-one spoke, just the occasional smile of recognition or a whisper, with a partner/companion. The one time I did hear an old couple talking to each other rather loudly, it appeared very discordant and, immediately, another woman walked over to them and shushed them.

The exhibition set-up uses wireless location-based tech to track where you are so that the head-hand set can play the relevant operas and sounds that go with the rooms as you enter and walk around them. No need to ever tap a number into the handheld device to match up with the exhibit in front of you. The effect is to place you in your own digital musical bubble – quite a contrast to how multimedia guides are used in art galleries and other museums. The transitions from one opera to another are abrupt but the moving is fluid. You don’t have to suspend your disbelief of going back in time to work out what buttons to press.

In the middle of the series of themed rooms and joining passages is a large cavernous space where short clips from films of more recent operas were projected onto multiple sets as if appearing on the backstage of an opera house. Very cleverly done. It was mesmerizing to watch and listen to one after the other – enjoying the climax moments as they multiplied across them. This was where the combination of sound and sights really worked for me in unison.

The whole experience was one of sheer delight. I could not agree more with an excerpt from last week’s Evening Standard’s review:

“Throughout, you’re hearing sounds so beautiful that it’s a wrench to leave one historic moment and enter another. You want to stick with what you’re hearing. What drives you on is curiosity to see what the clever organizers have come up with next.”

However, you are always very much an onlooker – in reverence and in awe. Opera does not have to always be so. Last year, one of my students and I worked on a collaborative project with the English National Opera and a tech company, called Holition, where we developed and evaluated an app that was intended to enable the general public to literally ‘step into character’ and in doing so, imagine what it was like to be an opera singer. It was called the MagicMirror and we dressed it up to appear as a make-up mirror in a real dressing room at the London Coliseum Opera House. It was incredibly effective. Pity, there was not some more of this kind of interactivity at the V&A. But then again it is a museum and not an opera house.

Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Cognitive Dressing

Posted on 07/05/2016 by Yvonne Rogers

There is so much hype about AI at the moment; how it is going to transform society in so many ways. The 4th industrial revolution seems to be in our midst. Our lives will be made more efficient and everything will be easier but at the cost of 20th century jobs ceasing to be and machines becoming more autonomous.

The latest offering is from the fashion house Marchesa who have teamed up with IBM Watson to make an AI-enabled dress – somewhat misleadingly called a cognitive dress. The dress has a network of LEDs sewn into it that can change colour depending on signals sent to them. LEDs in clothing has been around for years and is super dumb. So what is intelligent about the cognitive dress? Well it is based on an analysis of social media data in realtime. IBM Watson analyzes Marchesa’s follower’s tweets tagged #CognitiveDress, instagrams and Facebook posts – and uses these to translate the aggregated sentiment expressed through colours. Words like cool, amazing and awesome are tagged as positive emotions and if enough are detected then the dress will transform into a rose colour (signifying joy) and then coral when the sentiments get a bit more passionate, and then aqua if excitement is detected. Others colours projected are lavender that shows the followers are curious about a model or product and butter to show encouragement.

Now remind me what lavender means? The mappings between the colours and the underlying sentiments seem fairly arbitrary but maybe that does not matter. Followers watching the models on the catwalk can ‘see’ the colours on the dress change in response to their Internet activity.

But this isn’t AI in the true sense. It is a bit of keyword crunching and machine learning, triggering colours to turn on when a threshold for a state has been reached. The underlying technology that was developed to do this is hardly rocket science. IBM also uses its powerful computers to gather thousands of images stored by Marchesa and feeds them into a color design tool, which it claims to be able to understand how the psychological effects of colors, image aesthetics and emotions are interrelated. Maybe that could be considered cleverer. The creative part however is not what appears on the dress – but a neat design tool built on this that can suggest a new palette to designers that they might not have thought about and which fits Marchesa’s brand.

There is much more that can be done with the emerging AI technology. But, importantly, we should be thinking of how humans can work together with computers to make better decisions than each can do alone – about how to live our lives more creatively and enjoyably, resolve complex problems, create new inventions, work out how best to feed 7 billion people, develop new economics models and so on. What excites me is how computation, machine learning, and human intelligence is how we can synergistically come up with new ideas for a diversity of tasks, from planning a complex itinerary, determining the best way to learn, and to help politicians work together on a new global warming agreement, peace initiative, or trade policy. It requires thinking at what points should computers solve problems, simulate solutions, and show outcomes and at what points should humans intervene, overide, control, suggest and inspire.

Which Reality?

Posted on 27/02/2016 by Yvonne Rogers

Virtual Reality is all the rage again. Last week Mark Zuckerberg extolled the joys of not only being able to see and interact in virtual worlds but to be able to record those special moments, yourself, using a 360 degree camera. Up until now, we have had to rely on filmmakers and researchers to develop the VR content using expensive equipment and powerful software. But it seems, sometime soon we will be able to get our hands on the technology and start capturing birds in flight, cars racing past and our dogs doing tricks – so that our friends and ourselves can see and share them from all angles. For Zuckerberg, a recent father, it was imagining being able to capture his daughter’s first steps that caught the headlines:

“I hope we have a 360 camera that can capture the whole scene, so if my family isn’t there to experience it, I can send it to them afterwards — or it would be real-time enough where I could stream it to them live. They could put on a headset or get a message and feel like they’re really there and experiencing it.”

What a wonderful sentiment. But I wonder how much better the experience will be than existing ways of capturing those special moments, like using smartphone video or GoPro or even a cheap and cheerful camera – that can be quickly uploaded to Instagram or Facebook or WhatsApp or whatever – for all to see at the press of a button or a swipe of the phone. With VR it requires donning a headset to see the content. For many that could be a step too far. While the headsets will come down in price and every household will be able to afford one for Christmas – it is likely to not be the best quality. For an unknown number of people (could be quite high) it will make them feel claustrophobic, nauseous or headachy. Also overlooked in the current hype and fanfare about VR, is that the headsets are like toothbrushes – fine for you to wear but not for anyone else to use. They can pick up human scent, especially hair sweat – being worn so closely to the head – meaning they can get very smelly and unhygienic. It is likely that no one wants to don the VR headset of a teenager gamer anymore than they would want to try on their sneakers.

The few times I have tried on an Occulus Rift headset it has been sanitized for me with a sterilized wet wipe. Even then, I detected a slight whiff of the last person who wore them. Can’t see people getting the wet wipes out every time they want a quick VR fix. Of course we could each own our own headset but you might find out you don’t like the smell of your own head. I suspect the first generation of VR headsets targetted at the general market will go the way 3D glasses went – those that had to be worn for 3DTV. Most have fallen into disuse, disrepair or got lost behind the back of the sofa.

Besides wearing a VR headset makes people look weird and as this video attests, it is also terribly anti-social. You immediately shut yourself off from the rest of the world in ways that other technologies don’t. While it can be very annoying to be shut out when someone answers a call or checks their phone when you are in a conversation with them – you can look away, fiddle with your own phone or give them a glare to let them know how you feel. When someone goes into VR forget it.

Of course you could meet others in the guise of avatars in a VR world and have lots of fun. That possibility has been around for year for gamers. Other areas, such as training and overcoming phobias like fear of flying have also been benefitting from the application of this technology for a while. The leap from this to everyday viewing and sharing of moments is still a leap of faith. Having said that – when the first disposable 3D cameras came out back in the mid 90s I was bowled over by the 3D postcard photos they created. And spent a happy few months playing with them. Then they just disappeared off the shelf. Whatever happened to them?

My money is on augmented reality being the winner. Microsoft’s HoloLens looks amazing. Where it differs from VR is in the nature of the wearable and the digital augmentation. The wizardry behind HoloLens, will allow the user to still see and engage with the real world while also interact with all sorts of overlaid 3D content on that world. It is still very much a technology for the individual but at least you will be able to see what the rest of the family is up to in the living room or whether the real family dog wants some attention.

Creative Charities

Posted on 08/02/2016 by Yvonne Rogers

While waiting for my coffee to be made at Costas I noticed a lemon floating in a cup of water on the counter with a tantalizing teaser besides it: “balance 20p on the lemon and win yourself a drink”. I have never tried to do that before and so was curious to see if I could. Of course, my delicately placed coin slipped off the lemon and slunk into the cup of water as the lemon rolled over like a barrel with the weight of the coin. It lodged itself in the bottom of the cup along with several other 20 pence pieces. I asked the barista if anyone had achieved the seemingly simple feat and she said, wisely, yes a couple of customers had but she had no idea how. Perhaps, the secret is to hold the lemon with one hand to stabilize it while using the other hand to place the coin on top of the lemon. Somehow I felt that might be cheating and not in the spirit of raising money for a good cause – in this case it was the Costa Foundation. It seems that other pubs and cafes have also been using this trick as the video below shows someone trying to do the same at Weatherspoons. I failed to find a video of anyone succeeding the lemon test.

Raising money for charity has seen many innovations over the years. Last year the ice bucket challenge was all the rage where people poured a bucket of iced water over their’s or someone else’s head to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In doing so, it was intended to encourage people to donate to research. An integral part of the challenge was to upload a video to Twitter or other social media platform. The silliness went viral; over 2 million tagged videos appeared on Facebook, alone.

An annual favourite event in the UK is Red Nose day, organized by Comic Relief. Lots of people don a plastic or furry red ball on their nose and do something equally silly. Last year, they raised nearly 100 million pounds. Rather than freeze to death, people did all sorts of other crazy things, such as getting everyone to come into work with their face painted in some funny way. Passers-by are encouraged to dig into their pockets or go to the website and donate whatever they can. It always seems like lots of fun for those participating. The money that Comic Relief raise is then spent on all sorts of projects to transform the lives of millions of people, both in the UK and across Africa.

The name often given to this kind of feel-good and good-humored charity raising lark is somewhat unfairly, called “slacktivism” – implying that doing something silly with minimum effort to show that you support a good cause is rather shallow – because it does not require any long-term involvement or commitment. Most people don’t agree. Even if it is only one-off, it manages to raise millions of pounds while increasing people’s awareness about certain diseases or good causes. According to the Huffington Post, scientists were able to make a scientific breakthrough from the money donated from the ice bucket challenge last year, namely identifying a protein that fails in the cells of most ALS patients that importantly, can be repaired. That seems like a mighty achievement.

But a dark side to how charities run themselves is starting to raise its ugly head. While many spend wisely the money collected by people having lots of fun there has been a growing concern about some charities who are splashing the cash as if they were heading up a company or corporation. Fat cat salaries for execs is one example that is raising crossed eyebrows. More worrying, is how some charities are selling services and products to unwitting customers which are not the best deal for them – so that they can raise ever more cash. One that has come to light recently is the sale of car insurance by a charity that many people trust because it is meant to be looking after their interests. Because the charity is recommending a package many assume it is the best one for them. Given that there are now a myriad of packages for insurance, Internet Service providers, and utilities, it would seem a worthy thing to be doing. But the truth is that some charities may be suggesting options that are not the best value for money or in the interest of the customer concerned – but which helps them to line their coffers. Now, that is really taking the biscuit. Far worse than a bit of harmless slacktivism.

Meanwhile I checked up on the Costa Foundation and found nothing untoward in their fund raising or spending behaviour. The charity aims to “relieve poverty in coffee-growing communities. Its mission is to improve the life chances of boys and girls by providing them with the opportunity for a quality education. Foundation schools deliver both academic and extracurricular programs that enhance health, gender equality and environmental awareness.”

I’ll happily have another go at the lemon test but pass on the counter of irresistible cakes that also lure you to spend more.

Sheer Delight

Posted on 01/06/2015 by Yvonne Rogers

Last week I watched a 16 year-old girl dissect a cow’s eye in front of a bunch of 6-12 year olds at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It was gripping seeing her pulling bits of muscle and fat away from the eye to show the third eyelid and then removing other parts to reveal the lens, optic nerve and back of the eye, which was a beautuful turquoise colour. For 20 minutes the kids surrounding her were literary on the edge of the bench, all the time drawing in closer and closer, as she revealed and explained more about how the eye works. At one point, she slit the eyeball and some black sticky stuff spurted out, narrowly missing one of the kids – to which they all squealed with delight. It added to the excitement and suspense. At another point, she had them all in the palm of her hands as she explained how we see with stereo vision. She also asked them lots of questions to which hands shot up to the sky to give an answer. Why do cows have a third eye lid? The answer: to protect them from scratching their eyes when grazing harsh and prickly grass. I’d never thought about it in that way before and that has stuck with me since – making me want to find out more about what other animals have them and why we humans don’t have one (we don’t need one since we don’t put our heads in thistles to munch all the time). At the end she revealed the lens – as if it was a jewel – and got the kids to look through it to see upside images of themselves that she then got them to think about why they were not the right way up.

The girl who performed the dissection did so with great skill. She was also an excellent teacher. She is hired as one of about 50 teenage explainers who work for the Exploratorium and who have gone through hours of training to learn how to engage members of the public in science. It is part of a programme started by Frank Oppenheimer, who was the founder of the Exploratorium and who believed that only through explaining to others do you learn at a higher level. You also learn a lot more about the people who you are explaining to – what they understand, what intrigues them, what they find difficult to understand and so on. At such a young age, explaining in public to whoever comes along helps them develop self confidence and social skills in approaching people, listening and talking – all fundamental skills that everyone needs to learn.

Later that evening, I watched a YouTube video of another teenager explainer dissecting a cow’s eye (there are several). While her explanation was very clear and followed more or less the same script as the one I had watched live there was something missing. The audience. In the live show, I could not help observing how the kids were so gripped by the dissection and how they kept getting closer and closer to the action. I also noted how others came to see what was so exciting and stood on the benches or squeezed in whatever space was available. A special learning moment for explainer and audience.

It was without question something that will stay with them forever and hopefully for some whet their appetite to learn more about the fascinating world of biology.

I was struck that even though explainers, teachers and members of the public can present on stage or in front of a camera it is never the same as being there in the moment when you can ask or answer questions, actually feel the eyeball in your hand, smell the liquid as it spurts out and talk about it to whoever is standing or sitting next to you. While you can learn a lot from watching videos these days you can never capture the wonderment that is central to wanting to learn more and importantly, be able to explain to others.

Ten Pieces

Posted on 28/04/2015 by Yvonne Rogers

Ten Pieces is a BBC initiative to inspire a generation of primary school children to listen to, explore, and get creative with classical music. It is the brainchild of Katy Jones, an executive producer at the BBC, who for the last two years worked tirelessly and with amazing energy, planning and masterminding the whole thing. The ten pieces represent some of the best and well known, a taster that can be listened to in one sitting or separately. They include classics such as Holst’s Mars from the Planets, Beethoven’s Symphony Number 5, and more modern pieces, including John Adams Short Ride in a Fast Machine. A film of the 10 Pieces was made and shown on British TV, where the pieces were introduced, performed and choreographed in electrifying and captivating ways.

It is not surprising that Ten Pieces has spread like wildfire in its first few months since being announced. At the beginning of the year, more than 120,000 children watched the film at their local cinemas throughout the country, triggering them to interpret and explore what they had seen and heard in their own creative ways. Since, it has cascaded through a multitude of different avenues, manifesting itself in many forms. Many more children together with their teachers, national orchestras, musicians, conductors and TV presenters have come together and re-presented and interpreted them in art, performance and other forms of expression. The official website is brimming with reports, blogs, tweets, videos and images of musical happenings, being added to each day. Only last week it was announced that two of the Proms planned for this summer will include concerts that will celebrate the first year of Ten Pieces at the Royal Albert Hall.

I have had the enormous pleasure of listening to Katy telling me over the years about her latest venture, project and ingenious way of engaging ever more children and adults. Sometimes, it was hard not to want to pick up a trombone, trumpet or flute to make music and join in the fun.

But tragically and unexpectedly Katy died last Friday completely out of the blue, aged only 51. Many heartfelt tributes from all corners are starting to stream in via social media, from those who have just found out about the terrible news. She touched many with her infectious smile and contagious ‘you can do’ it spirit. I hope her wonderful energy and special magic will live on and continue to fulfill her dream; inspiring all manner of generations from across the world to not ever think again that classical music is boring but to want to ‘get creative’ with it.

Photo from the Manchester Evening News

360 Degrees

Posted on 08/03/2015 by Yvonne Rogers

My office manager asked me if I would do a 360 degree feedback process for her about the way she behaves at work. I tried to imagine what that would entail – moving around her from above and viewing her from every angle? Just like this new i360 viewing experience currently being built on the Brighton seafront. In reality, it means receiving feedback from a person’s immediate work circle and the person also rating themselves. In other words, 360 means multiple perspectives.

My colleague’s email ended with her asking me, “Please do be brutally honest in your answers.” My immediate reaction was to be aghast at being asked to do this. She reassured me that the process is intended to help her develop as a manager and was not meant to be about evaluating her performance. But there is a fine line. Giving someone feedback on how well they are doing and how they could improve, in my mind, is a form of appraisal. Surely, better done using a proper procedure where there is a form both have filled in to use as a vehicle to talk through, where the appraiser gives a mix of selective, gentle and praiseworthy feedback combined with carefully worded constructive criticism – not multi-rater scales with radio buttons you click on to be brutally honest. And, as I am her line manager she will know immediately what I have said: “Your responses will be anonymous and it will not be possible to attribute ratings to any individual Rater, unless you have been nominated as X’s Manager.”

I was talking to someone else at a different university who is also going through the same Leadership and Management course (seems every university in the UK has signed up their staff for it) and he seemed to think he had learnt more about himself as part of the process. When pressed, however, he seemed less willing to provide specific examples of what this meant in practice. But let’s hope that learning more about yourself in this round about fashion might make you understand how to manage yourself and others better.

Much more fun are the magic mirror augmented reality apps that are coming out, intended to enhance and extend the user experience by giving people real-time feedback on how they look when trying things on, like sunglasses, make-up or clothes. I’ve tried a couple of them with a number of colleagues, students and friends and each time it is hilarious. The first trylive-eyewear lets you try on a range of glasses as if you were looking in a mirror. As you move your head around the virtual glasses appear to stay stuck to your face making it appear like you really are wearing them. It is uncanny.

http://youtu.be/kpwhjGOi5KQ

MakeUp Genius by L’Oreal is a free app you can download that lets you try on lots of different kinds of makeup – especially that you would never dream of wearing normally.

http://youtu.be/67Fw855WzVc

That kind of 360 degrees is a lot of fun!

Bushy Tailed

Posted on 30/09/2014 by Yvonne Rogers

Today I found myself jumping and jigging around with a large furry tail strapped around my waist. I had been invited to a preview of a new theatre production called Dusk devised and directed by David Harradine and Samantha Butler, artistic directors of Fevered Sleep. It will go on public release in mid- November at the Young Vic. While the production is meant for very young children, aged between 4-7 years, adults and helpers are invited, but they have to join in, too, even being daubed with special green paint on their face.

A colleague, Sarah, and myself, were visiting with a view to developing interactive technologies that the children could subsequently express their feelings and reflections about the piece. Getting children as young as four to reflect on their phenomenological experience is quite a challenge – but one we were inspired to think more deeply about in light of having taken part.

Dusk is set in a theatre where groups of children come into a darkened space and are met by a friendly host, who is wearing a tail. He makes fun of them not having a tail – thereby making them all want a tail. Piles of big bushy tails magically then fall from the sky and the children scramble to put them on. Tailed-up, they then follow him through an Alice-in-Wonderland like red door into a magical forest, where there are bright lights, stars, moons and trees. Not knowing what to expect or when to sit down or jump around with their tails they are like butter in his hands. The suspense is palpable and what is in store proves to be a real treat. The children are completely immersed in the experience – for well over an hour. Even the fidgety ones stop in their tracks and join in with all the others.

Central to the piece is a 40 minute film that traverses the physical and the digital, time and place. A lost hybrid creature with horns and a tail wakes up to find he is all alone in the forest. He tries to find the other creatures he was playing with, before he fell asleep, and comes across the same door the children, at the theatre, have just entered. He walks though it and is confronted by an unknown world, where he experiences all sorts of emotions, from fear to joy. At various points he cries out in a haunting way, with the hope that someone will answer. Each time the children echo his cry sometimes spontaneously and other times egged on by the host. It was both mournful and joyful to listen to them bearing their soul, with heads high and mouths wide open – sounding like a pack of wolves.

The narrative is about growing up, where the hybrid creature crosses mountains, seas, forests and terrains on a long and often lonely journey. He eats flowers to survive and takes comfort from seeing an owl, a deer, a snail and a beetle. Through his journey he comes across men destroying a forest using menacing logging equipment and then when he finally enters a city he sees a tree caged in by wrought iron – intended to protect it. Paradoxes like these of being unprotected but needing to be protected and being protected but needing not to be protected are one of many that are traversed through the piece. There is a lot going on – a rich layered tapestry of meanings. What would a four year old make of it all? Judging from their faces – a lot.

At various points of the journey it looks like the creature is about to make it home but in classic Shakespearian style some other obstacle or challenge gets in the way. During these moments, the children instinctively turn their heads to the physical door at the back of the theatre forest that they entered through – waiting in suspense for him to appear in person and then when he doesn’t, swivel their heads back to watching him virtually on the screen in front of them. Each time it occurred, it was for me a wonderful moment and so clever – the kids traversing the physical and digital and back again in seamless and seamful ways.

They seem to know when he will finally come home. Rather than jump out of the screen – like in the movies – he eventually and somewhat hesitantly comes through the physical door. He then wanders through the undergrowth where the children are sprawled and seated, kicking their tails and touching their faces, to make sure they are real. He then whoops them up into a crying frenzy and then spontaneously they are up on their feet, following him in his special tail-jigging dance. And all the adult audience members and helpers who had donned tails (called ‘big its’ by the host) find themselves joining in, spellbound and smiling – and that is how I ended up jigging on the spot with a whooshing large furry tail behind me.

The piece is both a film and theatre and sometimes neither. From the programme blurb, it says it is “an invitation to see the world with our eyes and ears wide open, smiling awestruck. To slow down and to look.” Judging from the absorbed reactions of the little ones it seems the directors succeeded in doing more than that. It was a far cry from any Disney film, TV show or cartoon that they feed off during their daily screen time. Instead of a sea of faces fixated ‘heads down’ mindlessly staring at a screen, we witnessed a group of ‘heads up children, enraptured, alive and embodied – being both an audience and being a part, being there and not being there. That is mindful interaction and a joy for all to see.

Real Talk

Posted on 15/08/2013 by Yvonne Rogers

A fellow commuter was having a bit of a rant on the train yesterday about how his colleagues, especially the younger ones, don’t talk any more. He got more and more animated in his diatribe against the youth, glued to their screens, constantly tapping away on Facebook, Twitter, Yammer and email. But what really pissed him off was what they were not doing, rather than what they were doing. Why could they not spend some of their time face-to-face with people, practicing the art of conversation and using a bit more body language?

My fellow commuter manages a corporate hospitality company, where socializing offline is central to their business, which involves procuring new clients to sponsor sporting events, such as the Olympics. He lamented how it is rare now for someone to get off their seat in the open plan office and go out for a coffee. Instead they all drink take-away coffee and eat ready-made sandwiches at their desks. None of them ever walk over to the specially customized coffee area he had built to try to encourage them to meet together a bit more offline – to catch up, share an anecdote, voice a worry, or simply engage in gossip and in doing so, practice the skills of small talk, medium talk and big talk. As a result, they don’t know the first thing about how to talk to a client, let alone how to engage with them in the first place. They rely on ‘the dinosaurs’ (his term) to do the ice-breaking, the buttering up, the arm touching and the broaching. “What will the company do when he retires” he sighed, “God only knows…”

Good old fashioned networking, where time is spent relaxing over dinner, seamlessly switching between day-to-day stuff, personal stuff and work stuff, provides the fabric for building up rapport, trust and a sense of being wanted and respected. People are far more likely to give and want to be part of something if they are treated well and looked after. But it takes time, effort and skill to know how to network well, something you can’t learn from online chatting. Sending an email to the manager of the marketing department of Adidas or Nescafe, however charming or witty, simply wont cut the mustard. If you want a company to part with their money you need to be mindful of them.

The widespread use of the social media tool, Yammer (over 2 million employees at more than 100,000 companies have used it), that looks like Facebook and Twitter, makes it even easier to not have to talk face-to-face with colleagues. It’s all mediated through the system: “Yammer filters the conversations with Share, Ask, Praise, Event, or Poll prompts. Responses are tracked by most likes, most replies, most posts, trophies, and badges that are consolidated in the Leaderboard.” Whilst one can quickly get a sense of the pulse of the office or the word on the street, by following the numerous ticker streams of online comments, thumbs up and quips, it is not real talk.

It is not just the hospitality business where the art of small talk and face-to-face networking is on the wane. It is happening across all walks of life (as I wax lyrical about in my recent TEDx talk,).

In my workplace at UCL we are conducting a study to see whether we can buck the trend by turning a ‘dead’ building, where no one really talks to each other besides the people in their own group, to being more of a curious lived-in building, that encourages people to talk more with each other – even strangers – in the lifts, on the stairs, in the coffee room, etc. about anything. It is called ‘Mood Project Building’ and is being headed by Sarah Gallacher.

The project is investigating how physical and playful installations can be used to encourage a greater sense of community and social connectedness within a building. The idea is really simple – to encourage people, as they walk about the building, to squeeze one of a number of coloured squeezy balls that are located in public spaces on each floor of the building to reflect their mood. Are you having a yellow morning? A blue afternoon? The squeezes from the different floors of the building are mapped onto a large LED floor display intended to act as a social meeting place. There people can discover and chat each day about what balls they have squeezed, why floor six is all yellow and then maybe, seamlessly switch into other talk.

So far, the interactive installation has triggered lots of people throughout the building to squeeze the balls, to talk to strangers, to even be subversive and to be curious.

Maybe we could also design a physical interactive installation to get those city guys glued to their screens to take a break and actually talk to one another more in the flesh. You never know one of those impromptu conversations could lead to an unexpected and fruitful collaboration and land them a big client. Goodbye emoticons. Bring on the real smiles.

Meatless Month

Posted on 14/07/2013 by Yvonne Rogers

Is it possible to give up meat when you are a serious carnivore? I bet a couple of Danish guys I know – who eat serious amounts of meat usually at every meal – that they could not go a month without it. I was surprised when they took up the challenge. There was much joshing and ribbing in the build up to the start. But on the first day of their new veggie diet, in mid-June, they went about it with much gusto and seriousness.

Throughout their meatless month, they ended up cooking many different dishes of vegetables, cheese, falafel, patties, pastas and more. They went through feeling very hungry, eating healthily, then sometimes eating badly (lots of pizzas, beer and cheese) and having to suffer, by having to cook meat for the rest of their family whilst not eating any of it themselves. It was very difficult at first – but the anticipation of the enormous meat feast at the end kept them going. And what is more, they now eat less meat in their day-to-day diet.

At first they both felt really hungry all the time, but then after a week they began to feel normal and even lost weight. A highlight was keeping in touch on a daily basis through sharing their experiences via email updates. Everyday they took photos and sent them as attachments to me with a description of what they had eaten, with witty asides. I’d really look forward to seeing what they had concocted, and, on the occasional day when they didn’t, would start to get worried. But my fears were unfounded. My emails sent to them showing concern made us bond more and their replies would be even wittier.

By the end of the month I had a collection of 60 dishes they had cooked and/or eaten. Involving the family, sending photos each day and chivvying each other along helped enormously and in its own way was a creative way to change a deeply ingrained and habituated behavior.

Below is an abbreviated version of our shared diary.

Day 1
J: – spinach and ricotta pasta with tomato and chili sauce
So far so good
M: I seriously dont know what to say
BUT Day 1 in the Veg World

Day 2 Breakfast

AND there was bacon and sausages on the buffet too, but I proudly did not have any.

Then for dinner:
J: 2x vegetarian pizza. Spinach, mushrooms, feta, chili – they were really good actually!

M: Homemade Flatbread with Falafel and Fetta

Day 3
On day 3, M got his daughter and friend involved and they helped cook a 3 course meal:
“My daughter A and her friend made dinner today – 3 courses. Hashbrown with salad as a main and chocolate cake for dessert. Really nice.”

Day 4

I did not hear anything on day 4 from either of them and got worried, so asked if they had cracked. They replied:

J: “No, not cracked at all..! Made my best effort so far. Mushroom and asparagus risotto – using vegetable stock. Cooked over a few hours in good company of a bottle of Rose. One of our most delicious meals in a long time. I think you would both have liked it.”
M: “No no.. Pasta dish with onion and cream. A little boring. Btw: Yvonne, what should we eat for protein?”

Sunday is usually a day for a roast with a big piece of meat or fish. The guys had to endure a Sunday without:

J: “Leftover Sunday But with a fried egg. The white blob on the left is a slice of goats cheese pretending to be steak ”

M: “Pasta with spicy beans. The rest of the family had salmon – not easy!”

After the first week I asked them how they felt about having given up meat for a week. Both said they were getting better at it but still felt hungry.

Day 8

This day was really tough for M because he had to visit somewhere that did not cater for non-meat eaters. That can be really hard – especially for the first time:

“We visited C’s daycare center yesterday where we had dinner. I had salad, carrots and rice. Seriously, vegetarians were not catered for. So I had what we call koldskål when I came home (advanced buttermilk).”

After two weeks I sent an email to them celebrating the occasion:

J: That is “two weeks left” I am thinking…
Me: are you dreaming of aubergines or bacon sandwiches?
J: Just bacon – no bread involved in my dreams.

Then came a night without an email from either of them and I got worried again, so sent an email to this effect:

J: “No worries. we had a long working day and ended up at the pizza place where I had a Quatro-Formagio 4x cheese one, again…”

It was M’s birthday during the month – usually a time for a big feast. He got up at 2.00a.m to pull the pork and slow cook it. Then during the birthday meal, itself:

J: Here is what we had today..
While we had the vegetarian lasagne with salad, on the plate, the other guests had the pulled pork roast sandwiches.. Very hard to stand the temptation! But we did!!”

The use of the subject heading could sometimes be filled with suspense. One day, J simply sent in the subject heading: Oh..and a breadstick….
Inside, the message said: “Very filling :-)”

After 3 weeks

“One week left. Look forward to a less restrictive diet, but feel a bit overwhelmed by the thought of mountains of meat, which I dreamt of just two weeks ago…”

Whereas for M, he was finding it all a tad tough:

“Still no meat. But dinners are getting more and more boring.

Nearing the end of the month, fear crept in for J:
“First day with meat will be Friday – at the group’s BBQ at P’s place. I am a bit scared actually… Might have to start out a bit slow. Seem to have adjusted to no meat by now. The first week I was soo hungry, but that is not really the case anymore. In fact I seem to fill up a lot easier than ever before. I also had strong meat craving for the first 2 1/2 weeks, but not so much anymore. A bit confronting when I think about a huge steak actually… what have you done to me!!”

The final day

Was a big surprise.

J: I think this photo speaks for itself..
First taste of meat after a month. Went to the research group’s BBQ last night, and brought with me the biggest T-bone steak I could find. I must admit that I felt a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to eat it all…

But it was delicious..! Absolutely fantastic, I have to admit. But then again it was a really nice piece of meat. The other meat-things I tried after that (meet balls etc, sausages, etc.) did not give me the same experience of satisfaction. So a month without meat certainly has done something to my perception of meat.
Felt very full afterwards though, and have had a bit of a tight stomach since.. I think I will ease it in over the next couple of days.
But nice feeling to be “allowed” meat again :-)”

M: “In the beginning I was hungry all the time, but was also enthusiastic about the whole thing. I actually searched for interesting and new recipes – which was partially successful. But it was difficult to change as my family still wanted to eat meat. Also, to make more sustained behavior change I think I would have to go into lentils and beans – which I didn’t. So the problem is that I ate unhealthy – chips, cheeses, bread with butter – just to avoid being hungry all the time. But I didn’t have stomachaches like I sometimes have – probably due to the lack of red meat. So I have cut down on red meat – which is probably good for me.”

On my travels, I’ve come across some of the most delicious braais and BBQs. I also discovered pub meat raffles (offering huge tray loads of raw meat). The idea of winning a pile of pork that would otherwise cost 40-50 dollars makes many salivate. However, the prize goes to Fiji, which I am currently visiting. It used to be called the ‘Cannibal Isles’ – a country that up until two hundred years ago still enjoyed eating the flesh (cooked or raw) of its (human) enemies. We’re off to see the caves tomorrow where there is an old cannibal oven still intact…

TEDx Einstein

Posted on 18/05/2013 by Yvonne Rogers

I finally did it! I walked onto a spot lit stage, with big polystyrene red and white TEDx Barcelona letters behind me and a red carpet underneath me, and delivered my talk. It was not really a talk, though. It was a performance. Emerging from the darkness to a keenly awaiting audience with headlight eyes. There is an enormous adrenalin release and the race against the 15-minute timer on the monitor begins. Go, go, go. How stand-up comedians manage this transition from hiding behind the curtains to a sudden light bulb flash experience, day-in day-out, I don’t know.

But it is much more than managing stage fright; there is also having to deal with the roller coaster build up that precedes it. For starters, there is the humbling experience of being coached by a professional; the constant self doubt you are not up for it; the perpetual tweaking of the slides, the conjuring up of new lines you think might be funny and then realize are not and more. And then on the day, there is the final countdown shared with the other speakers; you each have your own look of fear and worry that rubs off on each other. In our case, we had hours of A/V complications with non-english speaking technicians; foreign laptops that did not work in the way ours did, beautiful fonts lost in the process, rehearsals to an empty auditorium – and lots of visits to the bathroom.

Then the show begins. Perched on my seat in the front row, I semi-listen to the other talks before mine, unconsciously, mentally rehearsing bits I had messed up during the rehearsal, especially phrases that did not flow. Last chance. And then all of a sudden it is my turn to be miked up and pushed from from behind the curtains. It all happens in a flash. And, it all comes together – except my one video clip does not play but somehow I smooth over it. I even manage to smile, gesture wildly and finish with a flourish. A wink and then a final thank you. I look up to a clapping audience. I can hear ringing in my ears. Then it is all over. I walk off and the organizers embrace me and apologize profusely about my video not playing. I don’t care at that point because it is all over. And then the next speaker is standing under the spotlight, looking up and talking in loud spanish about robots. I sit down and for a few moments just breathe very slowly and deeply.

At the break, I steel myself to check if anyone has sent any congratulatory emails. A few have appeared in my mailbox, saying great talk, wonderful. I am mightily relieved, and the last of the adrenalin finally drains from my system.

Our TED event had a mix of spanish and english speaking scientists and artists, talking about a diversity of things, from remote kissing machines to robots with a sense of self who fear humans. In the end, I played safe rather than be too soundbite-ish. I gave my talk a community spin rather than the ‘smart technologies make us dumb’ line, I had originally planned. Instead of retreating increasingly into our own digital bubbles why not think about how digital technology can be designed and used quite differently: to share, to galvanize, to collaborate and be mindful of others when being together. The post production version is now viewable online. I had not realized how much backwards and forwards striding I did as a result of being told to stay within the confines of the red carpet.

Over dinner, later that night, some of my fellow speakers talked about how the TED formula is taking over from the old school academic lecture. We discussed whether we‘re becoming entertainers for short-attention spanned audiences. The idea of sitting for an hour listening to someone reading and deliberating a nuanced philosophical argument from their hand written notes seems a thing of the past.

There is a piece online called ‘Against TED’ by Nathan Jurgenson, that I felt, perhaps, was a little too harsh and a tad too clever in its critique of modern day TED, starting with the gambit: “When did TED stop trying to collect smart people and instead collect people trying to be smart?” No matter what the cynics say about TED being ‘so yesterday’, and having lost its edge, it still is an amazing spectacle, especially for those who are speaking or attending such an event for the first time. And, perhaps the democratization of TED as it is today, with hundreds of TEDx events being held all over the world, every week, rings some truth to the weary Silicon Valley crowd who have seen it all before (and indeed when doing my homework watching several of the existing videos, I worried if there was anything new to say that had not been said before and more smartly). But just as Albert Einstein continues to inspire generations of children so, too, can TED talks. Billions have viewed the 1000s of online videos of the TED talks, that have been uploaded over the years since it was an exclusive club only for the smart, silicon-clad crowd. That is definitely an idea worth spreading.

What will stay most with me about my big day actually had nothing to do with TED. On first arriving at the CosmoCaxia Science Museum, where the TEDx Barcelona event was being held, I noticed a spot lit wax model of Albert Einstein sitting at the information desk in the foyer. For a split second you think he is real. The setting, the clothing, his hair, facial expression and pose are perfect. I watched as a group of excited school kids also noticed him for the first time and ran spontaneously in unison over to the desk from where they stood. They giggled and stared at him in awe, all reaching out as if to try and touch him. It was a moment to marvel at sharing their moment of joy. Whoever thought of that great idea had a stroke of genius in them.

Future Fashion

Posted on 10/03/2013 by Yvonne Rogers

Where does work finish and fun begin? I’ve been playing with a Makey Makey kit that turns everyday objects into touchpads. As mentioned in an earlier blog my aim is to encourage elderly folk to see what they can make using it and to see if they can then teach kids how to create using it – inspiring a younger generation to unleash their ideas.

My first effort was to play a drum kit using fruit: I started playing with grapes, then apples and finally tomatoes as my inputs. It was really easy to map them onto the online software program. And when the grapes started sounding like drums it reminded me of when I got my very first computer program to work! Moreover, there was something very childlike and pleasurable in squeezing grapes and tomatoes to make different drum sounds. I then moved onto a digital keyboard. Equally, it it was just as much fun to make a simple piano melody by squeezing grapes and tapping tomatoes. Whatever next? My mind went into overdrive and I started thinking of assembling a fruit orchestra…

Part of the fun with using this kind of electronic toolkit, with fruit and salad as the input, is discovering something new about the world. In this instance, it got me thinking about how conductive different materials are – since this makes a difference to how well they act as input devices. I started off testing out plastic salad serving spoons but that was a clear no-no, whereas when I tried with the grapes I discovered they were very conductive. Apples were somewhere in between. It also led me to look into the fridge to see what else I could experiment with – cucumber, mustard, falafels, cheese, bread, chocolate… so many possibilities. Not only does Makey Makey make you think creatively it also helps you begin to understand some of the principles behind basic electronics.

(I know the video is amateur but it was tricky holding my phone camera, the earth wire and playing the fruit all at the same time.)

I’ve been looking recently at how others have been embedding technology into everyday objects. One of the latest trends is fashion. While, wearable computing has been around for several years, new and affordable electronic materials, such as LEDs, thermoconductive paints, longer life batteries and so on, are providing a richer palette for fashion designers to work with. One start-up ‘fashion and technology’ company called Studio XO, are leading the way. They have been creating and engineering interactive clothing that is stunning to look at and marvelous to wonder about the techno-gubbins behind it. Last month when I was in London, I went to a talk given by the co-founders, Nancy Tilbury and Ben Males, in the very fashionable Soho House club. It was packed to the rafters with fashionista and technology hipsters from all over London – standing room only.

Nancy and Ben were interviewed in a Q&A format by some cool dude who worked for crane.tv (an online video magazine for contemporary culture). After showing a short video they had made, they talked about their ideas and demonstrated their digital mermaid bra designed especially for Azealia Banks Fantasea Tour. It was studded with hundreds of blue and clear crystals interwoven with LEDs, which diffracted light among the crystals, animating them in time to music that was controlled by a pre-programmed circuit. Quite stunning. They also showed a Sneaker shoe they had embedded with various electronics, including a small LCD on the tongue that displayed an animated Puma running across it and various other LEDs in the sole and heal that lit up, depending on what the shoe sensed and did. Many of their designs are one-offs customized for rock bands and popstars. What they are now trying to do now is work out how to move on from one-off commissions to the mainstream clothing market.
At the end of their interview with crane.tv the audience, strangely, were baying for their blood. “How is it fashion? How is it different from Christmas tree lights?” one member asked? Another wanted to know why they were not creating more down-to-earth, health-related clothing that could improve the lives of millions of people, such as vests that could fend off mosquitos, thereby reducing malaria in Africa. Another wanted a suit that would grow with his expanding waistline and change to match his clothing needs rather than twinkle to reflect his emotions and moods. Others wanted more sustainable and durable clothing. Still others could not see how this kind of fashion technology could become mainstream, H&M clothing. Who would pay the extra for gear, that displayed digital content, other than a few trendy night clubbers?

Nancy and Ben, I thought, had a really tough time under the London fashion spotlights but defended their patch and position very well. I also thought their creations were highly original, pushing the envelope of fashion and technology in innovative ways, and, importantly, were a real pleasure to look at. Aesthetics still plays a vital role. Having digital content appear in various forms on your clothing in ways that the wearer can upload and control offers much potential for individual creativity and personal style. Maybe I am naïve, but I can see their push into mainstream fashion taking off … if only others could be less cynical.

I’ve also recently been exploring how technology can play a role in enhancing the dining experience. Similar arguments surface. We ran a workshop at the end of last year at the John Salt restaurant – that Ben Spalding was the resident chef at the time, experimenting with his creative and quirky pop-up dining experience. The questions raised at our workshop were many, but included does augmenting food with digital technology, such as lights, sounds and other media enhance the eating experience or does it serve simply to titillate? Moreover, might it distract and even get in the way of the enjoyment of eating? What does new technology, in its various guises, add that other ways of contextualizing the eating experience (choosing the seating, the cutlery, the lighting, the colour, the music, etc…) can’t already do. Is it just another gimmick? Or are we onto something quite new?

it seems there is a fine line between fad and fun when it comes to fashion and food. But there is much to be gained working out how best to mix technology with everyday materials to make the combination valuable, pleasurable and worthwhile.

Wising Up

Posted on 07/02/2013 by Yvonne Rogers

I have been thinking a lot recently about how we deal with getting older. A few of us just slip into it; many of us do our utmost to keep young, whilst others live in fear of what ageing holds. I remember vividly a poignant moment when my mother, then in her early eighties, looked me in the eye and said sternly ‘don’t grow old’. She didn’t say why but I understood.

Last week I visited Peter Jenks MFA show at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Cape Town where he questions the topic of ‘old’ age (defined as those in their 70s, 80s and 90s) by contrasting the realities of growing older with the entrenched attitudes to ageing in society. He chose to deal with this topic by making art that pits these two perspectives against each other. On the one hand, his work deals with the stigma and negative images of ageism, and on the other, the conditions and joys of growing older and wiser.

What stood out for me, as I looked at and heard him talk about the pieces he had assembled for his installation was his desire to learn a whole set of new technological skills (such as 3D laser printers, manufacturing technologies and CAD) at the age of 69. The resultant larger than life pieces that he was able to make through using them, coupled with him learning them late on in his life, emphasized the tensions between ageing and ageism in a dialectical comfortable-uncomfortable way. Very clever.

But there was something else that struck me, even more than his mastering the technological challenges and putting them to creative use. Not only did he craft the striking pieces, all by himself, by using the new skills and technologies, but also he demonstrated and taught the younger students on his course how to use them, showing them what possibilities they afforded to create quite different objects, artefacts and artworks. His joy at being able to share with others much younger than himself a new skill was truly inspirational.

The other night I went to a dinner party where everyone was 10-20 years older than me. They all appeared to be comfortable in their skin, regaling anecdotes, chuckling about political corruption, talking about their dreams, accomplishments and aspirations while all the time knocking back copious amounts of wine. One, a teacher, having returned/retired to Cape Town after working for many years in the UK, talked of her desire to help improve the educational system in South Africa. She, like many other retired folk – ranging from teachers, nurses, doctors, chefs to accountants – still have so much they want to do in life and give to society.

The question is how?

There is a website called The Amazings that offers “classes, courses and wisdom from elders with amazing life experience”. Paul will teach you wood turning, Laura corset making and Dot knitting using a loom. They are all over 50 (that is not old!), “a band of men and women fighting against the idea that older people should go quietly towards the dying of the light.” All great stuff.

But I want to do something a bit different. Part of what I plan to do this year, as part of my dream fellowship, is run workshops with older people who are active in their communities (such as the U3A – University of the Third Age) and have an interest in technology. My idea is to set up a series of whiz-domes, where older people come along for a day or two to learn and experiment with an easy-to-use technology toolkit for a particular theme, such as food, safety, learning or freindship. The hope is that this combination can galvanize them into thinking creatively and constructively, in ways they can share their knowledge, concerns and joys. The idea is to provide them with new opportunities and to see what they might conjure up. My prediction is that older people will engage with these kinds of toolkits in ways that are quite different from how kids or students would, by tapping into their wisdom. Possibly even more creative.

The toolkit I plan to use is MaKey MaKey, which turns everyday objects into touchpads. In a nutshell, it is a “simple Inventive Kit for anyone interested in art, engineering, and everything in between.” An example of what you can make with it is the banana piano – instead of using the computer keyboard buttons to play the piano, you hook up the MaKey MaKey to some bananas, and the bananas become the piano keys.

One of the blurbs on the home page says, “my four-year-old daughter has managed to connect the kit”. Just imagine what another eighty years of wisdom might do.

Creative Doing

Posted on 27/01/2013 by Yvonne Rogers

David Byrne begins his new book “How Music Works” with an insight that has dawned on him slowly during his glittering career: “context largely determines what is written, painted, sculpted, sung, or performed.” While ideas, personality and passion are very much at the heart of the making, for something to feel and be recognized as creative depends as much on external factors – the space, the performance, the audience, the feedback, the size, the shape, the mood and so on. Furthermore, so much depends on the internal and external being connected – where creators (be they musicians, artists, chefs, choreographers and so on) and their audiences (collectors, buyers, fans, readers, etc.) are intermeshed in terms of their influence on each other and the creative ideas they generate, share and mold. This seems ever more so, now that social media and the internet have become the glue that binds them; where tweets, blogs, reviews, likes, thumbs up or, if you get unlucky, thumbs down, are the pervasive currency of influence. The flipside of all this online activity is that there are more opportunities for public recognition – which could also mean there are more chances for all of us to get our creative acts acknowledged and appreciated. Well maybe.

Creativity is very much an aspiration we all have and want more of – whether it is at work or in our dreams. But we can’t all be the next Pablo Picasso, Michel Roux, Vaslav Nijinsky or Albert Einstein. A few of us will succeed in becoming famous but most of us will remain on the sidelines.

So what does it take to be more creative – especially for those who have had it beaten out of them at school and any vestige stifled at work? It is hard being creative when pouring over a spreadsheet, unless that is, you are into creative accounting. And therein lies the rub. You have to contravene rules and norms, think the non-obvious and dare to cross boundaries – which many of us find difficult to do.

To help break free from convention one can look to the wisdom of others. There is a plethora of self-help books on creativity vying for our attention on Amazon and piled high in secondhand bookshops. Many are uplifting, positive and easy to read. One I just skimmed through, claimed that it could “help you become an everyday creative person” and in doing so “help you instinctively solve problems more easily, see the world as a richer place and enjoy life more” (Maisel, 2000). Moreover, through unleashing your hidden creativity you will be able to write more deeply and more frequently. “Whatever you do, creativity helps you do it better.” No wonder we crave for more. Just imagine…

But how? Deep and more seem to be at the heart of this pop psychology wisdom. We need to start being deeper, more mindful, connecting more with our inner and outer selves, being more ambitious and letting our guard down more often. Some even go so far as saying loving yourself more will help release the creative juices. I’ve always been deeply suspicious of these kinds of pearls of wisdom. They are a little cheesy and rather huggy-Californian – especially for those of us who are a tad reticent or introverted in feeling.

Maybe the secret is in the doing, not in the feeling or the knowing, and then in the selecting, embellishing and regaling. And maybe we can just be a little more creative – not through having to be deeper or trying harder – but through observing and trying out new ways of engaging with the world and people – such as being a little impish at times. And maybe one does not have to think that being creative is about accomplishing that big thing you’ve always wanted – like writing a great novel, starting to paint again or learning to play an instrument but one can be creative in conversation, in friendship and in deciding what to eat, wear and try out each day. Instead of asking someone what ‘they do’ on first meeting try asking them something unexpected such as what was the funniest/embarrassing/craziest thing they have done that they dare to share with you. That becomes the conversation turner and you never know where it might lead.

David Byrne (2012) How Music Works
Eric Maisel (2000) The Creativity Book

Body-Defying Performers

Posted on 20/01/2013 by Yvonne Rogers

I am always in awe of gymnasts, dancers, trapeze artists, acrobats and the like who perform great feats that defy our sense of gravity and being-ness. How can someone high jump twice their size, walk on a sliver of a tight rope, or do a triple back flip somersault when hanging from a pair of rings? Last summer, when R and I went to see Zippos circus at Hove Lawns we sat on the edge of our ringside seats, gobsmacked as the final act unfolded: three guys on their motorbikes whizzing round and round like flies, upside down and inside out at incredible speed – all in synchrony – in a metal spherical cage called the Globe of Death. One small slip and all three could turn into an inferno. Split-second precision in the face of high risk is everything.

I also love to watch and listen to musicians who turn tradition on its head; inventing novel ways of playing their instruments to create unique sounds. Last night I went to see David Kramer’s Kalahari Karoo Blues at the local Arts Theatre, the Baxter, in Cape Town. The charismatic ageless compere moved around the stage effortlessly in shiny red shoes. While making a documentary about traditional guitar players in southern Africa over ten years ago, he came across some extraordinary ‘other’ musicians on his journey. And so began another journey for him, tracking down some of the most creative musicians to come out of the Kalahari and Karoo. With the help of YouTube he was able to find the most talented ‘hot dry desert’ performers – where it is not precision that counts, but the mastering of quirky instruments in music-defying ways – often home-made, for example making sweet African sounds emanate from tin cans, petrol cans, and coffee-tins.

The eclectic bunch that played at the Baxter included a folksinger from Vredendal – Mary Kriel – who strummed her shiny coffee-tin while whaling melodies from deep within; an 80 plus-year-old – Babsi Barolong – who plays the fenjoro, a handmade tin-violin; and a 30 something-year-old – Oteng Piet – who pretended to have a conversation with his girlfriend when playing a one-stringed segaba that ‘answered’ back life-like replies to his lonesome burblings. The one that stole the show, however, was an energetic 69-year-old – Hannes Coetzee – who jiggled, jerked and danced all through the night, writhing and twisting his body at every opportunity. His piece de-la-resistance was to play slide-guitar using a teaspoon in his mouth while using both hands to play chords and strum, respectively. It was astonishing to watch and wonder how he could get such control and passion from a piece of cutlery. Understandably, Hannes, has become the darling of internet viral fame. Not surprisingly, he has had millions of viewers watch his YouTube videos over the years and many imitators trying to play his unique style of spoon-guitar.

But the performer who really stood out for me was Ronnie from Botswana. A reticent young man who hid in the shadows for most of the evening, but shone like a beacon when it was his moment to play. Instead of making chords by placing his hand below the guitar neck and moving his fingers along the frets, he placed his hand above the guitar neck and moved his fingers, as if he was playing a piano, while strumming with his other hand. The technique is known as upside-down knyp-en-pluk. And the guitar is tuned to the key he likes to play – rather than the more common ‘Eddie Ate Dynamite Good Bye Eddie’.

The effect was to create a rich, warm, eerie multi-layered sound, that when coupled with his powerful voice, was sublime. Occasionally, he used his elbows to slide up and down the frets; and at one point lifted his guitar behind his head and carried on playing without looking. It was a remarkable spectacle. Even more extraordinary, is this fine young man had never been out of Botswana (until this performance), does not speak a word of English and yet has had over 2 million views on YouTube, featuring on the Bokete7 channel. While he lacks the infectious stage presence of Hannes Cooetz – he is just as mesmerizing, watching his fingers, elbows and voice do the talking.

The viral fame of these remarkable African musicians from the Karoo reminded me of the PSY phenomenon that occurred before Christmas last year when the then unknown Korean rose to stardom with his compulsive viewing, YouTube video, Gangnam Style. Over the festive period he reached a staggering billion views. One thousand million people from all over the globe watched him jiggle around and pretend to dance like a two-legged horse. Extraordinary.

Why are we drawn to these performers? Part of their attraction is how different they are from the rest of us – they create something unique by breaking away from the mold into a new space, that is ever more dangerous, daring, unusual, quirky, body-defying, and truly amazing…

Inspiring Otherness

Posted on 08/01/2013 by Yvonne Rogers

I flew back to Cape Town at the beginning of 2013 for the second stint of my dream fellowship. South Africa left such an enormous impression on me last year that I craved for more of its beauty, intrigue and mystery.

First port of call was a magical place called Stanford – a mountainous coastal village near Hermanus. Good friends from Cape Town had invited me to stay with them in their house in the bush; a tranquil remote spot on the water’s edge. During the days we were treated to fish eagles and mole snakes. During the evenings we sat round a roaring campfire staring at the night sky and admiring the inky darkness encrusted with milky ways, shooting stars, a very bright Venus and satellites mysteriously circling the earth above. And periodically we experienced the doppelganger mating call of the African Platanna frogs in the lagoon like the sudden onset of a steel band in full flow.

Technology simply slipped from our thoughts as nature filled our imagination.

Over dinner one night, the topic of conversation moved onto uniform rules in South African schools and how strict in detail they were a generation ago. The legacy of obedience and punishment for deviating – even ever so slightly – remains today although the rules are a little more lenient so as not to be too out of step with modern fashion. A boy’s hair has to be cut above his ears and shirt collar. A girl’s hair has to be tied back and her skirt has to be 7 inches above the knee. Boys not allowed earings. Girls only allowed one stud in each lobe. And so on. All exactly specified. Every week each child’s hair is checked and their attire measured.

I wondered how this regime impacted on their impressionable minds. What purpose does it serve that socks have to be of a certain colour, have the right stripe and be worn with cuffs at the ankles? And for those who dared to have an extra piercing in the upper part of their ear or a streak of colour added to their hair – would such peccadillo-inspired defiance, with potentially grave consequences, lead them to be different in later life?

The conversation then moved onto which teachers the kids liked at their school, which they disliked, who was good, bad and who was just plain weird. The 14-year old daughter, F, piped in about her maths teacher, whom she claimed not to like but admitted to being good because she made them work hard, fear and respect her. And whats more F’s grade went up by 15% last year. It turned out that F’s maths teacher stood out from the rest: riding a Harley Davidson, having short hair, wearing men’s clothing and taking part in cage-fighting (cage-fighting is predominantly a male sport where competitors try to force each other to submit by attacking each other in a cage with punches, kicks, knees and elbows and choking). Moreover, she even has a large baseball bat at the side of her desk that she threatens the kids with – if needs be. The antitype for school children brought up on a strict diet of female and male roles and rules. Maybe she was one of the few who broke away when she was a school child in an even harsher regime and now imposes her own self-styled code of conduct. Paradoxically, it appears as another form of severity but with an alternative twist.

The 11-year old son, F, then chirped in about his art teacher who was, “like, 600 (sic) years old, a hippy, with long grey hair and wore strange clothes.” He also was held in high regard, being thought of as a good teacher who made them see the world differently.

There was magic and mischievousness in the kid’s eyes as they talked fondly about their teachers who dared to be different. Thank goodness the school does not lay down the law for what the teachers can wear, say or do. Children so need to value divergence in a uniform world of orderliness and, importantly, be inspired to otherness, themselves.

Deconstructing Salad

Posted on 27/11/2012 by Yvonne Rogers

At a workshop I was running the other weekend on ‘Creative Dining, Cooking and Technology’ we were treated to the culinary delights of hot chef Ben Spalding. One of the dishes that he brought to the table was a small bowl containing a delicate salad that was beautifully plated. The pieces were tiny – a wisp of fennel, a sliver of radish, a shard of celeriac. The dish came with a paper print-out listing the ingredients – all 30 of them. Rather than place forkfuls of the assembled leaves, seeds and other tasty morsels into our mouths to munch – as one typically does when confronted with a mixed salad – the brightly-coloured list encouraged us to deconstruct its contents, identifying and matching up each ingredient to those on the list. I managed about 20. My neighbour slightly more. It was very much a shared experience as we compared notes; firstly, describing the visible dimensions, of colour, shape and form and secondly, articulating the taste, crunchiness and lingering flavours. Talking about the leaves transformed the usually talked over salad experience for me.

I asked Ben’s sous-chef, Nathan, what next and he said their new challenge was to come up with 50 ingredients that they could forage and which would go together. Upping the ante or what. Usually, a salad has between 1 and 15 ingredients with a dressing of 4 or 5. It is often regarded as a dish to freshen the taste buds or whet the appetite. Of course, there have always been main salads, where the leaves are accompanied with tuna, chicken, salmon, egg, nuts or cheese, often with grandiose names, such as Caesar, Waldorf, Caprese or Nicoise. But for a side salad to take centre stage and become the talking point was a stroke of creativity.

It made be think of the word salad and my childhood memories of being served it at school. Not nice. Always cold, off-putting and uninspiring: limp soggy-tissue lettuce, insipid thistle-threaded tomato quarters and ugly-tasting beetroot slabs. Then I switched to fonder memories: the first time I really understood what mouth-watering meant: tasting a bunch of ultra-fresh radishes served up by themselves on a plate with salt crystals and a slaver of creamy butter on the side. I could not get enough of the combination.

One memory led to another. Food is great for letting the mind wander. From salad to salad days. A lovely turn of phrase from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra – referring to the period when one was young, inexperienced, and carefree. From carefree to listening to ‘Lazy Sunday Afternoon’ being played on Radio One. To baking a different cake each week – chocolate, banana, lemon, cherry, walnut…to the delight of my family at Sunday tea. Stringing together poignant memories is a joy as anyone who has read or seen the film of Nigel Slater’s book Toast will know.

It was lovely to be able to pick at Ben’s salad and discover new ingredients rather than act all grown-up, trying to balance the delicate pieces on a fork. The secret to creative cooking is choreographing surprise that lets the diner deconstruct the dish and discover what’s hidden.

Art for Art’s Sake

Posted on 09/10/2012 by Yvonne Rogers

The president and Council of the Royal Academy sent me a posh invitation the other week, requesting the pleasure of my company today at the “RA Now Auction”, starting at 11.30 a.m. with a champagne brunch at Sotheby’s. How swanky is that? The paintings to be auctioned were from top-dollar Royal Academicians and Honorary Royal Academicians, including the likes of David Hockney, Barbara Rae, Anish Kapoor and Zaha Hadid. Some of my favourite artists and architects. It was bound to attract a huge crowd. Much to my disappointment, however, I was unable to accept as I had a prior work engagement.

I’ve been to Sotheby’s once before when R and I just went in one day as we were walking past. A live auction was going on where eloquent Chinoiserie vases and other fine oriental knick-knacks were being bid for. We were gripped by the spectacle, watching the poker buyer’s faces, as they subtly raised their hands in a dance, choreographed by the high-pitched, high-octane performing auctioneer on the podium at the front of the room. Just imagine if I had gone today and raised my hand a few too many times for a Hockney with a glass of bubbly in the other. I dare not think but dream on…

Buying art online from relatively unknown artists is more my line. You can make their day by sending 30-50 dollars for a small piece. One such artist that caught my eye first on Flickr was Harry Stooshinoff – I ended up buying some of his work on a site called etsy. The web is flooded now with such online art sites. Virtual hanging of one’s portfolio on a website, like Flickr, is what any savvy art student or amateur artist does as de rigueur. The trick is deciding which images of your work to upload, how many to include and where to place them on the page; always thinking of how to capture the eye and short attention span of the online viewer (it is so easy to flick through the myriads of art streams). Then you need to know how to promote and push yourself without being too in your face or shameless. How often do you tweet or Facebook your latest? Which people do you email or text personally? How many other like-minded artists do you click on to show your appreciation in the hope they will reciprocate and increase your popularity in the likes and stars leagues? The nuances and etiquette of self-promotion online are for just evolving.

One cool site I visited has turned homemade art into a merchandise business. Society6.com lets you frame your work as prints, or on t-shirts, hoodies, iPhone cases, tote bags, skins and cards – all at very affordable prices. You make it look good by selecting the right colour backgrounds, and you never know, you might just nudge someone into buying one. R, with tag name Beauxtanic, has just put his up for sale in a variety of styles (see below for the hoodie collection). If your work starts selling, it might just transform into hot cakes, and then one day you may reach the giddy heights of Andy Warhol mass production status. Or your throw of the die may mean that it is only your mum that buys your mug for Christmas.

Personalized mugs, t-shirts, key-rings, etc., have been around for a long time. People send a photo to a company who then prints it on the artifact of their choice. Society6’s business model does the same but you send in your art. A possible outcome is that potentially anyone can suddenly become popular through viral t-shirts. Instead of the ironic slogan t-shirts that are currently fashionable wouldn’t the world be a different place if you suddenly saw someone walking about town wearing a t-shirt with a painting your boy has created. If only buying and displaying art in this way would take off – the world would be a lot brighter!

Meanwhile endorsing people on Linkedin seems all the rage. I keep getting emails from people I’ve not heard from for a long time saying they have endorsed me for my skills and expertise. Yikes! Am I supposed to reciprocate?

Sound City

Posted on 28/07/2012 by Yvonne Rogers

Sometimes you find yourself being a tourist in your own city. Yesterday after work, I got caught up on the crowded Circle Line on my way to the Tate Modern, along with the hoards of Olympic Ceremony goers making their way to the Stadium. After I surfaced from London’s underground, I walked across the now affectionately called Wobbly Bridge, that was thronging with people from far flung places. We all found ourselves suddenly immersed in unexpected stereo sounds: single words and sentences booming from big speakers hanging over the bridge cables, resonating like a wall of deep sound.

Having gotten a little tired of our mayor, Boris, chirping all week his heartfelt recorded message ‘Get Ahead of the Games’ – on the buses, trains and in the station concourses – I found this unexpected 3D soundfield, suffused with our pattering feet, delightful. I discovered later that it was called Tales from the Bridge and created by Martyn Ware (founder of The Human League) in collaboration with the poet Mario Petrucci. Lines of poems and strings of local anecdotes about the life and times of London ran and rang alongside us as we strode forth across the Thames. They did not stream together as a coherent narrative but faded and overlapped, acting as emotive heart-string pullers. I was transported back to being much younger, vividly being reminded of special times when I had gone to see a Shakespeare play outdoors at Regent’s Park and a trip to the Museum of London. This jolting of childhood memories was a refreshing change, making me focus on the potency of words rather than having to navigate my way through the visual overload of garish Olympic mascots, banners and flags. From the accompanying website, it suggests it will “immerse the listener in an oasis of peace and contemplation, half-remembered dreams and thoughts, of meditation and learning.” Indeed, instead of worrying about something at work I drifted back in time.

I eventually met up with Rafael at the Tate where we stumbled into one of its latest installations located in the bowels of their massive oil tanks. The first darkened enclosed room we went into had just a hanging microphone that emanated with powerful 360 degree voices. Again, my ears were seduced by a singular form of audio art. I sat and just listened. Appreciating art through sound is ephemeral. But such momentariness triggers visceral emotions and memories in such a sharp shard way. I wanted to linger in the moment in quite different ways to being immersed when looking at visual art.

Back in the underground we heard several buskers, strumming and singing in the echoing tunnels. Again, it took me back in time to when I first heard those songs.

Such is the magic of a tune when walked into an unfamiliar context but very memorable time.

Hearing the city, augmented with mellifluous voices and sweet sounds, is such an arresting contrast to the “cha, chee, chee, cha, boo, booom” we hear so often and resent so much leaking out of our fellow commuter’s ear buds. While city dwellers enjoy their personal playlists reverberating through their inner worlds, serrendipitous street-shared sonics pervading our cities are, in my mind, infinitely more pleasurable for all.

“I’m not in love. So don’t forget it. It is just a silly phase I’m going through.
I’m not in love, no no, it’s because…”

10cc’s mid 1970s ethereal song reminds me of long gone summers. To top the day, I caught a snippet of it when walking past a store. And even now, it continues to hit a sweet spot: melancholic, romantic, and full of teenage-angst.

Google Art

Posted on 05/07/2012 by Yvonne Rogers

The diversity of tools Google keeps churning out each year to help you search, check out and be nosey is mind-blowing. My early favourites were Google earth, Google image, and Google scholar. But recently I have been enjoying Google street view.

Like a lot of people, I love typing in a place I have lived in or visited before and letting Google transport me back there; then taking control to click and zoom through at street level looking at familiar places, houses and the cars parked outside them. Google street view displays stitched together images taken from a fleet of cars that have poles stuck on them with nine directional cameras.
While creating effective facsimilie 3D worlds, the roving medusa heads can sometimes throw up a few unexpected and quirky images. The front of a car can sometimes appear again in front of the whole car like a forward shadow. There was a craze last year, to collect funny, morbid or bizarre images that should not have been there, such as nude people, cyclists accidentally knocked over by other cars and pedestrians appearing twice but in different parts of the pavement of the same street.

The Montreal-based artist, Jon Rafman, collects screen captures of the never intended for public consumption incidents that have somehow slipped through Google’s screening software. The result is his ongoing series The Nine Eyes of Google Street View, part of which will be shown at the Saatchi Gallery later this month. There is something dreamy about many of the ones he has chosen to show on his website. No doubt we will be in for a treat when the show opens.

But in my mind, a far more creative use of Google street view to make art is Rafael’s appropriation which he stumbled upon during his forays and experimentations. To begin, he gets himself in the zone and comfortable with a glass of wine at hand and some good music playing in the background. Then he starts picking places in the US Midwest he knows, checking out the objects and detail in the neighbourhood or scenery. The technique involves a series of follow the street view arrow, create the circle and zoom to it. His trick is to capture part of this movement in interesting and distorted ways by using the combination of shift command and 3 keys. Then he collects a whole set of these and puts them on a flash drive, drives to Kinkos to get good quality prints made up of them. Then he looks at them and selects parts that he thinks will come together well. Then he draws a collage of a place made up of different perspectives and shapes. The one above is his drawing inspired by several images he screen captured in street view Bloomington, which he is familiar with both physically and digitally. It took me right back to the core of the Midwest experience. Menacing clouds in big skies matched by brooding big trees and melancholic bushes that grew in front of you on deserted wide streets where nothing much else happened. Nature’s force and a lack of human nature.

I had a go myself at capturing and distorting my street and although a bit tricky at first, quickly got the hang of it. I could understand the joy of his technique. The screen capturing pan over the digital terrain reminded me of using water colours, where part of the thrill is in not knowing quite what the paint will do and where it will go.

Last week when I was in the US, however, I got a little freaked out by Google. I was doing some research on people and noticed how the page of search results was full of images – typing in someone’s name can show immediately an annotated profile, with image, date of birth, place of school and whatever else. I know this stuff is readily available on Facebook, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, 123, Google scholar, image etc, but Google search now brings it all together for instant viewing as a digital footprint. I don’t know why it surprised me – maybe it was the immediacy of getting so much personal information about someone all on one page just by typing a few letters of their name. Here in the UK (google.co.uk), we don’t have that facility yet. I am sure it wont be long, but you can see what it looks like by using the Google Chrome browser and typing in google.com/ncr.

Flying Colours

Posted on 21/05/2012 by Yvonne Rogers

Sometimes when I have to give a talk in a strange place and I don’t know anyone I get terribly anxious. Last week, having already gotten lost in downtown Cape Town, trying to park near the place I was to give a talk in, I got into a bit of a tizzy. Then I discovered my host was unable to make it due to sudden personal circumstances.

As I sorted out my cables, computer and connectors I took a deep breath and looked momentarily towards the ceiling of the room. There high above was a life-sized Desmond Tutu, in his signature crimson frock coat, flying across the room, hanging from a swinging chandelier. Such surreal moments don’t happen that often and I did a double take. I am sure my state of mind made it seem even more bizarre. But it worked magic. It made me chuckle and forget to fret.

How did the artist come up with such an idea and then execute the work to make it work so well? It was ingenious. The former archbishop was very life-like and even his cross dangled as it should – if he was really flying. His facial expression offset by his glasses was also very realistic. As I moved towards him I had a slight uncanny valley moment. The chandelier had also been created to be at an angle as if swinging with his weight – but all was perfectly still.

Throughout my talk I looked up at Desmond for an occasional inspirational moment. I am not sure if that was the intention of the artist but it worked well for me. Mostly, we give talks in classrooms, seminar rooms, hotel rooms or convention centres that are usually stark and devoid of any humour. Life without such quirkiness would be very dull, indeed. Funnily, though, I was not sure how many of the audience actually noticed him!

Special Ones

Posted on 04/05/2012 by Yvonne Rogers

“Knowledge is when you know a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is when you don’t put it in the fruit salad”.

Debre, an interaction designer here in Cape Town, emailed me this last week – which her brother had passed onto her. I thought it captured the difference between the two very succinctly. But what does it take to know how to have and impart wisdom? The more I read about wisdom and the more creative people I meet, the more I realize that it is about being special in some way, knowing that and knowing how to share that.

How do you know when someone is special?

The first person I met on my dream fellowship, when I set off to New York in early February, was Jerry Bruner, who is now a sprightly 96 year old, brimming with wisdom and love. He is very special, having spent his life acquiring wisdom and sharing it. I flew especially to New York to see him – it had been several years since I last saw him. He invited me over for lunch to his enormous loft apartment in Manhatten. As I walked in, I heard myself chirping away from his wee computer. He’d started playing the YouTube video of my dream fellowship, sometime before I arrived, but because the bandwidth for his network connection was so slow it had not downloaded properly. It was still streaming like treacle through a funnel, intermittently playing for 3 to 4 seconds, and then stalling for several minutes before stuttering a few more words. 7 minutes was being stretched into 3 hours!

Jerry sat down in front of his computer and invited me to sit opposite him in a chair. I obliged but it felt surreal to be in doppelganger mode. As we chatted, I found myself being echoed from his computer. Switching from the here and now to the now and here was disconcerting for me. Jerry, on the other hand, found it quite funny. Eventually (we were about 3 minutes into the video and an hour into our conversation) we moved over to the dining area of his vast open plan place. Thankfully, the digital me started to fade. The real me helped prepare a simple lunch of salad, cheese and berries. We then opened a bottle of sparkling water. As we ate and drank the simple fare, we talked and talked. Much was shared; personal, political interspaced with reminiscing and playfulness.

I finally left late afternoon with much to savour. I walked slowly back to my hotel in Washington Square, a few blocks away, looking at the splendid high rise buildings surrounding me, reflecting on Jerry’s words of wisdom. It was not in the telling of what I must do, read or see in life, but in the giving to me of something special. It is hard to put a finger on exactly what it was. The pearls came through the conversation, not through any worldly advice.

I had been in the presence of a special one.

José Mourinho, Real Madrid’s coach, is known for being special but for very different reasons. He has just won La Liga, knocking the seemingly invincible Barcelona off their perch, having previously won the league title in Portugal, England and Italy. When he joined Chelsea in 2004 he said at his inaugural press conference, “Please don’t call me arrogant, but I’m European champion and I think I’m a special one.”

A stroke of genius, I thought at the time – and the name “The Special One” has stuck ever since; 8 years later it remains his moniker and rightly so. Besides being incredibly handsome, which makes most of us female supporters go weak at the knees, the Special One has that look, know how and ability to work out how to play the beautiful game in ways other managers (with the exception of Fabio and Alex) can only dream about. He is foremost a brilliant strategist, always 5 games ahead and 10 moves along – like a chess master – knowing how to position, psyche and play his team while unnerving his opponents. He meticulously does his homework each waking moment for his master plan using his wisdom and the knowledge. But he also uses technology very astutely to extend his thinking. For example, he externalises his plans far into the future, drawing and interacting with clever software that enables multiple tactical positions to be simulated for each game. And during each game, he scribbles down on-the-fly tactics, challenges and changes using a scruffy note pad that helps him make crucial decisions, when under immense pressure.

In the last couple of weeks, I have been working with an artist from the University of Cape Town, Johann van der Schijff, helping him interview local school kids and teachers about their experiences of being part of his latest art project called Community Punching Bags. It has been for him a very long, extensive and collaborative project, involving many children, teachers, leather makers, photographers and more.

I joined him late on in his project and curiosity has gotten the better of me. We’ve had several probing conversations about what it means for an artist to collaborate with others and to curate something that would not be possible without their participation. For many of us, the idea of collaborating with an artist usually conjures up producing or creating an artifact that the artist wants, such as Anthony Gormley’s ‘Field for the British Isle’ where he recruited lots of kids and their extended families from schools in Liverpool to help him make 40,000 cute terracotta clay figures as part of his immense installation. For Johann, the collaborative process entails asking specific people to do different things that they are skilled at or will push them beyond their comfort zones, that then becomes a central part of his curation – coming up with new designs, running workshops or cutting and stitching leather punching bags.

One comment that he made which struck me was how he can immediately see in the people he recruits who is special and who he wants to work with and push more. Being special to him involves being able to pick up quickly on what has to be done, having self discipline, listening and taking on board what other’s say, and then working it out on your own. In addition, there is always a look, a big smile and a sense of knowing. But to see specialness in others needs developing a level of self-awareness about one’s own specialness.

“People who are wise can interrupt, take a step back, and reframe … a lot of wisdom probably has to do with looking at a situation differently and reframing.”

I just read this in a book on Wisdom by the award-winning science writer, Stephen S. Hall, which is based on a phone call he had with another Stephen (Kosslyn) in 2008.

Special people know that. And anyone can become special provided that they …

External Minds

Posted on 27/04/2012 by Yvonne Rogers

I was having a lovely daydream the other morning while sipping coffee at my local brasserie – that dreamily overlooks the mountains – when I suddenly found myself being drawn to the conversation going on between two guys at the adjacent table. One of them kept banging on about his son Murray. “Murray this, Murray that…” But it was not because Murray had done anything wrong; quite the opposite, he had become a saint.

The guy was very animated because Murray had changed beyond recognition since being introduced to a new learning method. What drew my attention was his description of Murray drawing on a chalkboard that they had put in his bedroom – that covered the whole side of one wall – with whatever was going on in his head. Instead of sitting terrified, clenching a book, whenever his mum or dad asked him questions about his maths homework that he was unable to answer (the guy enacted the mortifying scene grippingly), young Murray now runs upstairs and writes down what he had just read in a book or seen on the TV onto his chalkboard, using “mind maps, whatever, you know that kind of stuff”.

But it was not just this kind of externalizing that helped, it was also what he did in between his scribbling at the chalkboard. The guy by this time was even more bubbly: “Murray runs up to his bedroom, spends 10 minutes on his chalkboard, then runs around for 10 minutes or bounces a ball, and then goes back to his chalkboard and spends 10 minutes drawing again.”

The physical exercise was central. The chap was also on a roll and my ears pricked up more:

“His test results have gone up from being in the 50s and 60s to being in the 70s and 80s. His whole attitude has changed. He’s all left-brain (poor bastard, he gets that from me), but now he has changed completely. Only this morning he was up at 5.45 a.m. drawing on his wall… His mum and I don’t have to shout at him anymore – which never worked anyway. He just does it on his own. And we have changed, too. We no longer nag him “Murray have you done your maths? Murray have you done your homework?”.

And on and on he went. Just goes to show what a chalkboard and a bouncing ball can do to transform a previously dreaded experience into something that is enjoyable. I’ve always been fascinated with how externalizing one’s thoughts changes one’s thinking and the joy that comes from it. But combining it with running around and bouncing balls has enabled the lad to both embody and externalize, leading to his being proactive and excited by learning.

But it is not just learning that can benefit. Big whiteboards remain a pervasive and persistent technology in many walks of life. Ben, the chef I have got to know at Roganic, uses one in his kitchen to write down his half-baked ideas and notes that inspire his new dishes; Adam, the brilliant wine maker we met in Stellenbosch, has a very large one in his wine farm which he constantly consults to remember what state his fermenting wines are in, and which to mix with which. The large diagram of his cellars provide an external and shared resource that extends his mind and offers cues for inspiration.

Being Inventive

Posted on 28/03/2012 by Yvonne Rogers

Slackbacking is South Africa’s answer to hiking-lite; everything is organized by an enterprising company for you from the moment you fill in your personal details online and enter your credit card number. From then on in, there is a guide at hand to assist, firing emails, brochures and other information and doing all the planning and logistics. An itinerary is thoughtfully and meticulously worked out for you, with full board accommodation arranged and other little treats. All you need to do is bring your own day pack and fill it with a packed lunch each day that you hand pick, after tanking up on a sumptuous breakfast.

I just returned from a long weekend of slackbacking, traversing 28 kilometers of the Western Cape coastline, taking in a large number of pristine bays, each quite different from the last; whiter, wider, windier, sandier, sloppier, stickier. Some covered in discarded shells, others big boulders and others strewn with giant tentacles of desiccated kelp. We trekked from Paternoster to Jacobsbaai in picture perfect weather, lapping up eternal sun, sea and surf. Blue skies, white sands and blue and white waves, all stretching far into the horizon. Each new vista being more gob-smacking and mind-blowing than the last.

For most of our hike, we barely saw anyone else walking; the few other people we did see were dotted along edges of the camping beaches, surrounded by tents, and lots of camping gear. It was out of season, being the start of winter, and yet, paradoxically, a perfect weekend for being outdoors. Ideal weather – not too hot, windy, or humid. Those who had ventured out were a mix of retired folks, families and friends, hanging out, fishing, cooking and simply being. What struck me was the time, effort and ingenuity they had mustered in creating their makeshift homes.

My hiking companions told me how ‘being inventive’ was part of being South African, and their way of thinking out of the box. I could see their point as they described the details of the nomadic homes, with makeshift loos, power showers, brimming fridges and coolers charged by chugging generators. One we poked our noses in (the owners were only too pleased to show us around and demo their array of tight fitting gadgets) was a 4×4 tent, that had a double kitchen sink with running hot water, a fold away shower snucked on the side of the 4×4 (also with hot water), 150 litres of water stashed away underneath in an enormous tank, all the electrics you needed to light up the sky and even a well hidden drinks cabinet, with bottles of spirits all neatly lined up. We were all mightily impressed with its cleverness, compactness and neatness.

Contrasting with mankind’s ingenuity, was Mother Nature’s sculptures, huge boulders and rocks carved individually by wind, sea and storm, protruding and jutting from the sand. Many of these extraordinary rock formations were coated and stained in vivid reds and tangerine oranges. After a while, we began to see them, not just as abstract-shaped beauties, but as transmogrified camels, toes, snails, elephants, human faces and other body parts. Perhaps we had been primed since our lunch destination on day 2 was ‘tietiesbaai’ – a name given to a rock that stands out like a breast on the hill behind the sheltered beach. After that, it was impossible not to have evocative Dali-esque moments.

On our way home from a restaurant in the small town we were staying at, we looked into the local hotel that was a melting pot of locals and tourists. At the back we discovered a pokey darkened bar, adorned with rash moments of frivolity. Hanging from the ceiling and the walls was a dense canopy of underwear, of every color, shape and size, many stenciled by their former owners. This room full of cheeky curios is officially called the Panty Bar. It has been in existence for nearly 40 years ever since the former owner, Johan Carosini, started a collection of ‘honeymoon panties’. Our minds boggled.

There is something very weird about these kinds of small Twin Peak towns and their surroundings. Not only do the blistering boulders make you see the world strangely, but so, too, do the local’s antics – letting their hair down or setting up camp – make you imagine being inventive differently.

Think Inside

Posted on 11/03/2012 by Yvonne Rogers

It has become increasingly popular for people to aspire to a new form of creativity that entails thinking ‘outside the box’. The idea is to think differently, unconventionally and blue-sky. The hope is that innovation and vision will come forth. Indeed, it is a phrase I sometimes resort to when explaining what I am trying to achieve on my dream fellowship. But it got me wondering, what is wrong with ‘inside the box’ thinking? What is the difference between inside and outside thinking? Is one more conformist and the other more free-spirited? And why should one way of thinking result in a more desired outcome than another? Maybe constraining one’s thinking can be just as good for the big picture as being let lose outside of the box.

Last week, whilst visiting the Indaba Expo in Cape Town, we spotted three large boxes suspended from the ceiling that an architectural company had placed, with only their name appearing on the brown cardboard. They afforded stepping inside; one’s gaze was immediately drawn to the headless people who were already standing inside them, making you wonder what they could see that you could not. The more you looked the more your curiosity was sparked. I waited patiently for a box to empty and then I stepped under to see what was hidden from the outsider’s view.

It was a very clever bit of marketing. Once inside the box the four sides immediately grabbed your attention, being so close. In my one, I found myself swivelling around and being face to face with images of buildings and people, promoting the firm’s work with examples of case studies. If you want people’s complete attention for a few minutes away from the competing crowd this is the way to do it.

The other night, I watched G and G’s kids horsing around inside a very large cardboard box, which their new stove had arrived in. They’d made a couple of eye slits in the side to see out from and opened up a seam at the back so it could easily be placed over their heads. Like the architectural firm, there is something delightful about restricting how one can see and move. The kids got enormous pleasure, giggling infectiously, not knowing quite where they were going as they propelled themselves box-bound through the garden.

Just as there is a desire to break free from routine and predictability in life – by stepping outside the box – there is, equally, pleasure and possibility for new thinking to be gained when stepping inside the box. The trick is to know how to do both, dovetailing between them, in order to see from above and below, inside and out, and within and beyond.

My PhD student, Stefan, just pointed me to this video by Joseph Pelling called ‘outside the box’ that won an award for best animation. It is very funny.

outside the box from joseph Pelling on Vimeo.

Pairing 101

Posted on 02/03/2012 by Yvonne Rogers

It is increasingly trendy for gastronomy restaurants to pair a wine with a course, matching the notes, flavours and textures of one with another. You read the list of ingredients in a dish and then the type of wine they think matches it. Trouble is it is difficult to imagine the effect of the pairing just from the words, and by the 4th dish one begins to start drowning in the adjectives and labels, and start to lose the plot. And, if the tasting menu is 5 courses or more then that amounts to tasting 5 or more different wines. One’s eyes start to swim a bit. But maybe that is all part of the experience.

The basic idea of pairing, which has been around for centuries, is to enhance the dining experience; the elements of one are meant to bring out the elements in the other, resulting in an accentuation of tastes. The texture, smell, sugar, acidity, etc., in both food and wine are assumed to react differently in each other’s company. The trick is to make sure they are compatible in the matching.

There are numerous websites, books and guidance to help the amateur select the right type and taste of wine to match the kind of dish and its way of cooking. For example, Natalie has an online tool that even lets you select a food type (e.g. pasta), a dish made of it (e.g. gnocchi with brown butter and sage) and then when you press the button, it selects the type of wine you should serve up with it (e.g. Pino Blanc).

It is a bit obvious but reassuring for those who are just learning pairing 101. There are some basic ground rules about matching, such as white with white meats and red with red meats. A fundamental aspect is to understand the balance between the ‘weight’ of the food and the ‘body’ of the wine. For example, one would not mix a Cab with a light fish and, conversely, a Pino Grigio with a hearty, venison stew. But when it gets to deciding on a vintage and its terroir and matching these with the complex set of flavours that a good chef creates, you are joining a different league. Only highly trained sommeliers seem privy to the chef’s thinking behind the complex dishes. Then, just like the beautiful game, it can be a pleasure to score, but you need to understand the rules of their game, and they can seem quite elusive at the highest level.

Yesterday we went to a restaurant in Cape Town called Planet that served 5 course menus – both regular and fully vegan – with matching wines selected by the very knowledgeable and brimming with enthusiasm, Carl Heinz Habel. We ordered two regular and one vegan. The pressure to choose the right wine to match the balance of the ingredients in the meal was offloaded into his hands and I, for one, was grateful for this. He seemed so jolly, attentive and knew his onions.

As we sat down on very comfortable chairs in the rather grandiose Nelson hotel, the ladies were tucked in and immediately provided with a handbag stand to place their bits on – rather like the portable stools creaky folk carry around with them to sit on during long trips to art galleries. We were tickled pink by this detail – we could only assume its function was for the ladies to keep an eye on their purse when wanting to do a bit of fixing and fussing without having to grope around on the floor or the back of the chair for it. I kept thinking how some old biddies might have popped their pooch or feline friend in their bag for company. It was the perfect shape and size for nestling a well manicured spoilt pet in.

Our sommelier, Carl, had done all his homework before. He’d gone to great lengths to chose five different wines that matched each of the dishes – and it turns out they were different for the regular and vegan menus. Whereas I had First Sighting Pinot Noir 2009 with my starter of marinated mushroom terrine, G had de Grendel PIno Gris 2010 to match her quail terrine, rooibos cranberry jelly, and smoked corn samoosa. Normal wines use animal products for purification, vegetarian use egg-white and vegan some unheard of chemicals…I was convinced that they were inferior.

We decided to keep the menu as our extended cognition companion, and placed it at the empty place at the table – it proved to be indispensible by the second course, as we could not remember what we had ordered or the wine that was to accompany it!

We straight away tasted each other’s wines. For some, that might seem like defeating the object of pairing but sharing and comparing is such a natural part of the dining experience. My fear was confirmed; I felt short-changed bar one wine. Somehow, G’s wines always seemed more colourful, leggy, full bodied, long noted, punchy, and enhancing. We were completely bowled over by one of her wines, in particular, forgetting all about the food momentarily and just concentrating on savouring her wine – a local Semillion from the Cape. It just sung to us a complex and rich melody – irrespective of the dish we were eating. And we wanted it to keep playing. Sadly, the glass emptied all too quickly and the waiter did not seem to want to replenish it. Instead, the next one arrived, which turned out to be a real anti-climax.

I am sure there is an art to how one tastes a wine, takes a mouthful of it and combines the lingering and ensuing notes – just as there is an art to tasting dishes. However, I always get caught up in the conversation and forget to drink the wine, after an initial tasting. Then before you know it, the waiter is standing next to you, ready to pour the next pairing wine. I either have to leave the old one standing or slug the remainder quickly. Neither approach is satisfactory. I can’t seem to get the talking, wine sipping and food sampling mix sorted.

Knowing how often to sip, at what point during the eating and how much to leave at the end to maximize the balance of grape and grub, seems a step too far for me. And sometimes one can be mightily disappointed with a wine and not know what to do, especially if your fellow diners are enjoying theirs much more. One of my vegan wines had no taste at all. It simply vanished in the mouth and left me wondering where had it gone. When I explained this experience to the sommelier, he was rather taken aback; presumably it being rare for a diner to dare question his selection. He swiftly took my barely touched glass away and returned, saying that there was nothing wrong with the wine – insinuating, perhaps, that it was my palette that was at fault. As a gesture, he replaced it with a big fat bulbous glass filled to the brim with a big, shouty Chardonnay. I was not sure how to react to his brashness and so took a tiny sip, heard it scream “tourist” at me and so left it equally untouched until the next more lively glass of Pino Noir arrived.

I am sure pairing can be lots of fun; breaking down and matching up the elements that chef and sommelier have brought together but, on reflection, perhaps we’d have been better off slowly sharing, at our leisure, the same bottle of fine wine, that we all liked the sound of rather than being paced by the courses.

And finally, as noted by wine expert Mark Oldman, “Food and Wine pairing can be like sex and pizza: even when it’s bad, it can still be pretty good”. But a very dry wine with a very sweet food is, in his words, “the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard” (Wikipedia). On another day, I am sure my vegan wines would have enhanced the dishes, but on this occasion, the more powerful and potent opulent atmosphere of the place and the wit and charm of my dining companions, overshadowed the potential pleasure of the subtle pairings on offer. But much merriment was had by all.

Sweet Spot

Posted on 06/02/2012 by Yvonne Rogers

There is a new American quarterly magazine out called Lucky Peach that is about food and writing; the second issue features articles on the sweet spot of cooking. Such moments occur at a significant point in the trajectory of cooking – when something tastes just perfect, having been matured, dried, marinated, etc. Left any longer and the magical umami is ruined. Any less and it has not triumphed.

Underlying the metaphorical term is the idea that there is a limited window of opportunity to discover the optimal experience. For a chef to hit the sweet spot requires making a dish just so. Sweet spots can also have perfect moments. But you have to know how to recognize them. They can easily come and slip past unnoticed. A chef can overdo a dish by not turning the heat down at a key moment.

“You have to act at certain moments in certain ways. That is what cooking is.” (Donald Patterson, Lucky Peach)

Magic moments happen when the diner, reciprocally, experiences the chef’s perfect moment; often it comes unexpectedly and that is part of the magic. Suddenly, out of the blue, arrives a train of intense sensations. The trick for the diner is to savour them for as long as possible; lingering over them and replaying their unfolding delights before depositing them in a multi-sensory memory bank.

The other week I revisited Roganic; this time, with some fellow colleagues, S and D, from the Slade School of Art. They were as enchanted by the whole dining experience as P and N were as described in an earlier post.

D and I had the vegetarian menu. As we contemplated the sweet spot, our first dish arrived; “caramelized cauliflower, sour cream, raisin, roasted lettuce and pennywort.” It comprised smoked cauliflower florets, both white and brown, and a glistening gem lettuce heart sitting like an expensive jewel surrounded by a coating of cauliflower dust, gently flecking the rest of the plate. The composition was simply stunning; the palette of colour, shape, size and texture was perfectly spaced and balanced.

It looked too beautiful to eat – D commented on how it reminded him of a scene from Gulliver’s Travels that he had just been watching with his children. The separation of the tiny vegetables, herbs and thinly painted streaks of sauces made it look like a Lilliput landscape of trees, plants and streams.

We began by visually grazing all the different elements. But our mouths soon began watering, and we found ourselves involuntarily picking up our knives and forks in anticipation of the tastes. First, to be speared was a tiny white floret on the left of the plate. This was followed by the scooping up of an adjacent brown floret; our sweeping manoeuvres were delicately repeated, smearing each floret with alternating touches of brown raison jus and white sour cream. The symmetry was engineered and anticipated as part of the chef’s – Ben’s – perfect moment. We both just got it.

Once the florets had been devoured, we sliced into the emerald centre-piece. The texture of the lettuce and its fused tastes were divine.

Without discussing the implicit ordering behind our deft left-right-centre moves, D and I discovered that we had done exactly the same; it was as if the miniature forest before us suggested how we should approach and enter it in the way a painting does. And yet this was the first time we had seen this delicately poised dish.

It is well known that plating is central to gastronomy along with the selection of cutlery and tableware. One foodie blogger suggests that it should “completely obfuscate how the dish should be eaten. This serves to replace the diner’s initial hunger with feelings of uncertainty, inadequacy, and ultimately inferiority.” However, I think this blogger is missing the point – what is key is the playfulness behind the chef’s plating, especially how it triggers unexpectedness and joy in the gentle deconstruction of it. It is not about feeling like a lesser mortal but understanding its ephemerality – a core part of the pleasure is knowing how to appreciate it when it has gone.

Tasting Colour

Posted on 17/12/2011 by Yvonne Rogers

There is an art to selecting a superlative set of adjectives to describe the eating experience of gastronomic dishes – just as there is to explaining the fusion of ingredients and methods used to create them. Reading the captivating and conjuring words for dishes on a menu, then hearing the expanded accounts from the waiters standing next to you bearing plates of delights, primes the taste buds, but recounting afterwards the sensuous and delectable explosion of tastes they elicit can leave the uninitiated fumbling in the dark. The ease and eloquence with which the top chefs judge and comment on the finalist’s dishes of this year’s BBC Master Chef competition puts me in the shade. Instead of trying to compete with the food critics, chefs and foodies, I decided to ask my dining companions to talk about what ever triggered their experience of eating amazingly prepared molecular food.

Three of us went to Roganic, a temporary (pop-up) organic restaurant in Marylebone, run by Simon Rogan and Ben Spalding, and described by John Lanchester (the food and drink critic for the Guardian) as “pop-up on Viagra” with a “fair degree of modernist wizardry”.

We opted for their modest -sized and -priced, three-course lunch.

My companions, Paul and Nadia, started off in fine fettle, describing the free appetizer in terms of its unexpected weight and how it took them completely by surprise, as its texture and shape suggested it should be something else. Paul exclaimed, with animated gesture:

“It was like double surprising, it looks much heavier than it is, you pick it up and you realize it is much lighter than it is…You think it is going to be crunchy because of the crunchy stuff all the way along the top and then you bite into it and it is squidgy all the way through.”

This form of unexpectedness seems to be key to the intensity of subsequent pleasure.

As we moved onto the starters, Nadia began talking about her food colour experience – that neither of us had ever heard of before – and for which her husband thinks she is slightly barmy. She started explaining how she sometimes experiences – without warning – eating food in terms of hues and different shades of beige and brown. She does not know when it will happen, or which foods; it just happens:

“I don’t see it here (points to dish). I see it inside (points to her chest). Beige. I don’t know how to explain it. For me there is a clear link. I can’t cook with it because, if I think about it, it is a totally different experience, as it becomes an association. It comes, just like that, I can’t stop it.”

How exciting is that, I thought, sometimes getting an internal colour that you can’t see when eating a dish. Far from thinking she was a bit batty I was rather envious. I’ve never had an internal colour experience.

Back to earth – we noticed on entering the restaurant that there was a large pebble in the middle of each table. It seemed to go against my naïve knowledge of Feng Shui. The waiter smiled when we asked what it was for and said wait and see. We tried to guess – not having read any of the foodie reviews which mention it – but all got it wrong. The waiter reappeared and plopped on it a dollop of hand-churned, Malvern-salted, infused butter. Instead of the usual discreet side-pot of top-sliced butter we had a pièce de résistance – a cream, pearl-wave perched on a powerful rock, overshadowing even the beautifully nested assortment of bread rolls and crisp bread. And it felt beige!

Something as simple as changing the setting makes one see, the often taken for granted, in a completely new light – in this case, bread-spread. We all wanted immediately to scoop it up and then gleefully drop it on to our bread.

The pebbles are handpicked from Folkestone beach by the chef and their cold core keeps the soft creamy butter from melting, but also acts as a good ice-breaker for the dining party – you can’t help but notice it when you sit down. Clever.

I was curious to know how they were cleaned – thinking 30 large stones in a dishwasher might be quite a challenge to balance alongside the plates and glasses – not quite the same as stone washing a pair of Levis. Of course, there is a carefully thought out stone-cleaning procedure, including soaking them every night in salted water, boiling them for a couple of hours each week and lots of brushing and scrubbing afterwards, to make them pristine clean. They even tried baking something on them one time in the oven but several broke so they abandoned that idea. This anecdote of exploding rocks triggered Paul to recall his own about how when he and his wife lit a fire on a big rock to cook al fresco – while camping in the Australian outback. It turned out to be a sedementary stone that exploded in their faces, showering them with pieces of hot stone that burned little holes in their clothes. Stone the crows, I thought.

The unexpected highlight for me was a leek dish that used the King Richard variety. It turned out to be far from being the common or garden variety and much more befitting of its regal name. My categorizing of leeks is something I cook up with potatoes on a cold day to make a hearty soup. Roganic’s dish, however, completely reconstructed my conception of what a leek is. To start, the waitress came over to our table and showed us the dish that had just come out of the oven, explaining how it had been cooked. At first glance, it looked like a small, uncooked Cornish Pasty on a bed of peat covered in thyme. Then she pointed out that what we were looking at was a clay dish and we realized that the leek had been encased and cooked in its own mummy-like, clay pot. When next it arrived, de-cased and plated, it looked plump and golden, sitting on a spread of shallot jam. The waiter then shaved a Norfolk truffle ball on top of it, using great precision. My King Richard was finally ready to eat. My moment of pleasure turned into an explosion of intense flavours – I’ve never experienced a leek to be quite as beautiful. The Barcelona tapas experience came flooding back to me. I had to close my eyes and go ‘ahhhhhhhh’.

Each of the dishes brought their own surprise array of delights that we joyfully assayed; colours, textures, weightiness, crunchiness, and whatever words came out of our mouths. We tried their signature onion ash (that looked like something in between peppery flour and the gunpowder debris from indoor fireworks) along with foraged herbs, petals, wood sorrel, intensely, aniseedy shoots and various sprigs and seeds.

Finally, we enjoyed a warm afterglow that ended the meal – a small liquor glass of Douglas Fir-infused milkshake followed by a baby Victoria sponge cake which popped and crackled as we bit into its icing – like a delicate sparkler going off in the mouth. If only I could get a silver colour like Nadia gets her beige colour. Just imagine what that would be like.

Still 3D

Posted on 05/12/2011 by Yvonne Rogers

I remember buying my first 3D disposable camera in the mid 90s from a family-run store in Palo Alto and being wowed back then. Opening the wallet of my first 12 glistening prints, I was tickled by each one’s illusion of a 3D world, re-created on thick ribby paper. My snaps were of friends in tourist poses; standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, leaning on a big Cadillac, steaming in an outdoor hot tub, being dwarfed by giant cacti and being flashed by neon signs. The iconic images stood out boldly against the Californian-coloured backgrounds, like 3D models offering an imaginary, childlike depth of view. The hues were so vivid that the foreground objects seemed to pop up and out; nothing like the world we see through our own stereo eyes or when we interpret 3D from conventional 2D images. All very Wizard-of-Oz and dream-like.

In one of my earlier entries, Hyper 3D, I talked about how 3D technology capitalizes on hyper-reality. Balls, cars, arrows, and schools of fish come racing towards us and over our shoulders – making us feel the action as we slouch and flinch on our sofas. But as David Hockney wryly observes – in Gayford’s new book on conversations about his works – it’s just, too, toy-like: we don’t actually see or experience the world like that, ‘it is like someone is making a life-size replica of the world’.

So why not use the evocative power of 3D technology to do something different other than ‘out-real’ reality – depicting something that normally can’t be seen but only imagined? A mirror of the mind, perhaps, projecting hidden repressed emotions, memories and images? Last Friday, I saw an ingenious use of still 3D at Sadler’s Wells that tried to do just that – and it worked brilliantly. Wayne McGregor in collaboration with OpenEndedGroup (New York based, digital art collective) and composer Mark-Anthony Turnage put on the latter’s chamber opera “Twice Through the Heart” and added elements of still 3D, by projecting a tormented woman’s past, using two mega-screens that covered the front of the stage, out into the stalls and circle. The audience were given bright yellow plastic glasses to experience the effect. White membraned, 3D still images emerge like frost does when shown appearing on a glass window in slow motion. Behind the organic filaments sat a single mezzo-soprano – Sarah Connolly – alone at a bare kitchen-like table.

The story behind the opera is of a woman who has killed her husband, with a knife, driven to such depths because of his constant abuse. Now, she finds herself doubly imprisoned; the memories of her nightmarish former domestic life, where her husband kept her captive, unleash and unwind within the solitary confines of her prison cell. She cannot escape – 3D images surround her and we the audience; a kitchen sink with grey blood-stained taps loom above both her and us, coated in milky, tissue-like film. Against this otherworldly digital backdrop, we see her physical body writhe and contort; her pained voice etching further the pathos. The illusion is of a tortured mind oozing out of human skin, creeping towards each audience member, almost within reaching touch – such is the clever use of still 3D digital technology.

Then suddenly, to coincide with a dramatic moment in the opera, the digital imagery vanishes. In an instant, we see only a stark image of Sarah Connolly, singing, standing and staring into an abyss.

The beauty of 3D digital photography is in its stillness rather than its motion; enveloping rather than engulfing our senses. And OpenEndedGroup has gone one step further; combining it with the physical world to unsettle and suggest. This creative use is leaps and bounds beyond the toy-like, fast moving (main)stream of objects that propel towards us on commercial 3D TV.

Image from OpenEndedGroup – music.columbia.edu

Artful Conversation

Posted on 26/11/2011 by Yvonne Rogers

Meeting an artist for the first time in his studio is an exciting prospect. But how does one spark up a conversation, without sounding trite, too earnest or too much in awe?

I was invited by John Wragg RA to visit him, after I had bought a painting of his from the Royal Academy summer show. I decided to take him up on his offer and was accompanied by Rafi and his girlfriend, Amanda, who were over from the States visiting me. We set off in high spirits, driving to Devizes, a market town in the beautiful Wiltshire countryside. We pondered over my predicament; I asked both of them if they could think of an intelligent question – they being fine arts students. They did not see it as a problem.

We’d been talking, too, about the artfully compiled new book by Martin Gayford, ‘A Bigger Message, conversations with David Hockney’; reflecting on his portrayal of Hockney’s love of nature, how he had changed the way he painted and communicated this following his discovery of the iPhone/iPad app, Brushes, and his ‘voracious intellectual curiosity’.

Our host turned out to be very welcoming and made us feel at ease, making us a cup of builder’s tea and pouring us a glass of red wine, each (except he was so animated that he forgot to pour himself one!). My earlier trepidation was soon replaced by reverence. The conversation flowed from him; he told us anecdote after anecdote, interspersed with his views and opinions about life and the art world. We sat in his kitchen, switching between sips of tea and red wine, listening intently and laughing loudly. Surrounding us were a selection of his paintings, sculptures and personal artefacts. It was a strange experience to be trying to take them in – almost surreptitiously – while following the many threads of the conversation.

The questions I had thought about never materialized. Instead, I asked him more about his life. It just seemed more natural to talk so. We discovered he hung out with Hockney when he was 17 – they both being from Yorkshire and of the same age – and so knew him well. What a coincidence, we all chimed. But then he chortled, pointedly,

‘He is a millionaire and I just make ends meet’.

He then told us a funny story about why Hockney had dyed his hair blond and his journey to California. Several times he talked about Tracey E. And about how he had taught Anish K a few things at Chelsea. And now look at them both…

As time passed, it became more strange to actually talk about JW’s paintings and what was behind them. I suppose it is the same in my own field of academic work. One skirts around, for fear of making someone feel vulnerable or asking crass questions. And yet one knows the other craves recognition and the opportunity to talk more about their ideas. Often someone gives a great talk, goes for dinner with people who were at the talk, and after a few platitudes they all talk about anything but the talk.

After about an hour of kitchen talk, we went on a grand tour of JW’s idiosyncratic house, never knowing quite what to expect. We were led from one room to the next, happening upon different periods of his life and work. Secret doors led to hidden rooms full of paintings, photos, sculptures, cuttings, and artefacts – lying, standing or hanging in front of us, in measured and thoughtful ways. So much to take in – it made it more difficult for me to ask about any of them.

A and R, however, were bolder, asking a few questions about his technique of using hardboard versus canvas, oil paints versus watercolours, and so on. And then I stopped in front of a big painting, depicting a forlorn, egg-headed chap – and asked him – in a rather tongue-in-cheek way, why he had painted over the top of the man’s head (he often paints over and over until it feels right),

‘Just because.’ He looked bemused at such a silly question. Right answer.

That stopped me in my tracks.

Artful conversation lies in the layering and folding of topics, rather than directness of questions and answers. We found out a lot more about JW and his art through his seguing of anecdotes, memories and quips. In contrast, the conversations MG has with DH in the Hockney book are more focussed and reflective, like mini-interviews, more befitting of a book.

At one point in chapter 6, MG asks about the enjoyment of art. DH reminisces by describing his memories of sitting at the front of buses and in the front of cars, so he could see more, ‘because it is such a pleasure.’

But it was his anecdote about GIs in Vietnam that is most striking and will stick with us. He describes how the soldiers used to talk about ‘eye-fucks’,

‘when they are on the move they have to keep their eyes intensely looking for a tiny quiver of a leaf, over there or over there, taking in as much as they could.’

It stuck with him, as it stuck with us – and one can see why,

‘it is a way of saying the eye is having extreme enjoyment.’

As we wandered around JW’s collection, that extended into the café across the road (where we had coffee and cakes) our eyes were doing the same, but our ears were also having ‘ear-fucks’ – so to speak – with the enraptured conversation.

Athlete’s Dressing

Posted on 16/11/2011 by Yvonne Rogers

Nike’s online and bricks and mortar stores have always been at the leading edge of technological innovation. They have experimented with new cinematic, media user experiences; pioneered customer design, and encouraged users to creatively personalize their own pair of trainers through selecting from a digital palette of options.

We entered their new physical store in the sparkling, mega-shopping mall, Westfield East in the heart of Stratford City, with anticipation. The spacious, two-story, store did not disappoint. It was immaculately dressed – not just the windows but throughout the interior. We were immediately confronted by a cast of larger-than-life, headless male mannequins; clad in tight, white Nike underwear and GB football tops. They were very sexy-looking, triggering a primordial urge to kick a bulging football. The clever marketing people had lined up many brightly, coloured ones in the vicinity.

Ktchung.

Further back in the store, we spotted more headless mannequin models, but this time female, wearing top-to-toe black gear with shocking-pink, running shoes.

They make me want to run very fast.

The sports gear for sale was hanging on dinky things or neatly piled on back-lit surfaces that made you want to touch, hold and wear it. I am not a Nike fan – it would be a bit like mutton dressed as lamb – but after a few minutes of enjoying the eyewear candy, was easily able to see a younger version of myself encased in the latest tick logo, techno-coloured attire. It was all, too, seductive. I commented to one of my companions what a contrast it was from the jumble sale piles that are now commonplace in the cheap and cheerful ‘made in China’ labeled high street shops.

As my eyes continued hoovering the clothing spread, I was surprised by the lack of any TV or other digital screens. We’d noticed how in every other shop there are multiple vivid, large screens embedded in the walls – attracting and luring passers-by with swaggering, pouting beauties. Nike seems to have gone retro: letting its tops, bottoms and shoes walk the talk.

Having feasted on the first floor, we rode up the steep yellow-lit escalator for dessert. Our by now, large-pupil-ed eyes were drawn to an enormous cloud of bright orange shoe boxes, hanging at different heights over the edge of the escalator – they glowed in semi-darkness, giving you a warm feeling.

I eventually turned around, and at last spotted two tiny touch screens, discreetly placed on a back wall, next to a modest-sized flat screen, that flashed up images of Nike running gear. A direct feed from their website; blurring clicks and mortar. We walked up to them and behaved like toddlers; finger-tipping the screen, assuming it was us that were cycling through the images of watches, runners and visualizations.

Out of the blue, a human being appeared besides us, wearing a big badge saying ‘Athlete Michael’. It seemed as if he had just transmogrified from our screens, clad in the latest Nike running gear – black tights, baggy shorts, pyro-technic trainers and an assortment of layered, lurid tunics and vests. We all stared at him, fixated by his badge, wondering if he was really real and who he was. He began by patiently explaining how nearly every Nike running shoe now has a chip in it and when Blue-toothed to a wristwatch transforms the running experience. This unlikely combo has become a huge success among joggers and runners over the years; enabling them to see on the go how many calories they are burning, number of steps taken, and, with the deluxe-iPod GPS combo – even the route taken, when they are slowing down or speeding up, how much sweat they are dripping, etc.

Athlete Michael got into his stride, as we cooed and nodded, marveling at Nike. He liked the wristwatch best because he can see at a glance how many x’s he is doing and how it is really easy to download this onto the Nike running website and see how his x’s are faring compared with the rest of the world’s Nike joggers.

For some reason, I was reminded of the TV commercial for UK’s Directory Enquiries service 118 118, that features men parodying different sports gear costumes to the Ghostbuster’s tune.

Rather than walking away Niked, I was left with an irritating ditty repeating itself in my head. Maybe a big video screen might have worked better on me.

Baltic Bin

Posted on 28/10/2011 by Yvonne Rogers

The Turner Prize has gone north for the first time in its 27-year history – to the BALTIC contemporary art gallery in Newcastle. I’ve always wanted to visit this splendid converted mill and, by luck, I was giving a talk in Newcastle this week, so was able to see both. And the exhibition was free, too, unlike when it is hosted expensively at the Tate in London.

Trouble was it was the first week of opening, half-term and raining. Even late in the afternoon there was a shivering queue snaking outside the building. We joined it and stood under dripping brollies and hoods, stamping wet feet. Eventually, we were counted in and went up the shiny glassy lift – that apparently many visitors like to spend their time whizzing up and down the floors to get a great view of the city. And then another 10 minute wait inside before we were let into the first gallery.

I always find it is a bit of an anti-climax following the slow moving anticipation associated with long queuing. You expect a big wow when released and it doesn’t materialize because you are in the wrong mindset. It takes time to settle one’s sensibilities again.

As a consequence, the first three rooms were rather underwhelming. We read the blurb on the walls and tried to imagine the raison d’etre behind the installations. S’s 5 year-old daughter A – who had accompanied us on her scooter – played with them, innocently picking up some fake leaves, touching a ragged sweat shirt bin liner in a funny shaped bin, and tracing lines on the sugar paper of another. And quite rightly so; they cried out for being touched – yet the posted guards posture suggested it was verboten. Happily, little angelic A skipped through her touches, deftly without catching their eye.

The last room stood out for me by a mile. I do have a penchant for paintings these days and the ones in this space by George Shaw were quite breath-taking. My money is on this man winning; he paints rain-stained streets, derelict buildings, ghostly garages and other desolate, dull images that are a permanent feature on every estate, dotted throughout the UK. I could immediately connect with them – a run-down council estate in Coventry, a poor working class one in Watford – what is the difference?

The more we looked at Shaw’s paintings the more they revealed – his limited palette of humble Humbrol paints, the deliberate lack of any human life and a relentless stoicism that seeps into ones very sinew when faced with such void vistas each day. But there is hope in the journeys painted out of his childhood. What stands out in all the gloom is his delicious dash of humour, captured whimsically in his titles. My favourite, which did make me laugh out loud, was “Landscape with Dog Shit Bin”.

In the distance of the canvas one can see a tiny, brightly lit red artefact orifice that has become such a pervasive feature of our parks and streets, without us so much as noticing this has happened – taking over from the red BT phone boxes that used to reside on every street corner, and which by the same measure, have now virtually disappeared. This quirky reference to a new order, civilized society eases us out of the heaviness of life that spans the rest of the painting – there is a glimmer of light in the most unexpected place that helps us work out how to escape an otherwise mundane and melancholic world.

Random Dance

Posted on 27/09/2011 by Yvonne Rogers

I had been looking forward to seeing Wayne McGregor’s new performance FAR since I saw his company of dancers rehearsing a couple of weeks ago – when invited by DK who is collaborating with him on a cognitive science project. I had been inches from their writhing, flicking bodies, fluidly transitioning between shapes and forms that defy our normal perceptions and understandings of the body.

I was enraptured then. But I was ecstatic now – watching their live show being performed just for one night at the Brighton Dome – a magnificent stage for a majestic spectacle. Even this morning long after the curtains had come down I am still in a state of suspended animation.

Words cannot describe the absolute beauty and depth of the 70-minute piece. Everyone in the audience was breathless and transfixed by the dancers, the lighting, the set, the music, the body-mind language, the metamorphoses, the flux between deft touches and powerful thundering rips across the stage. One moment a dancer seemed to defy gravity and do a single handstand, with the rest of her limbs looking like a cross, the next another dancer is pattering his fingertips delicately across another one’s arched skeleton-defined body, like gentle waves. Such flowing movements were simply divine…

I wanted it to go on and on and on – in the way one plays a track endlessly on discovering it resonates addictively with your inner self. It surpassed any modern/contemporary dance I have seen on every dimension (and I have been to many).

I later read David Jays review called ‘Unpeeling the Layers’ in the programme and I simply cannot match his eulogizing eloquence. It is in itself a dance of words written against a monograph photo of the set – very clever.

“they throw themselves into whiplash spins, let waves ebb through their necks, build counter-intuitive curves and angle into limb and spine.”

“buttocks jut outwards while knees swivel inwards; a pulse skedaddles down a limb yet changes direction at the joint.”

“Everything was up for grabs, and that’s very much McGregor’s own inquisitive approach to the world, wide-eyed and curious.”

David Jays writes about the inspiration for the piece interspersed with words from the great man himself. The piece draws from Roy Porter’s book ‘Flesh in the Age of Reason’ (FAR) – all about the 18th century explorations of the body, mind and soul – where new medical discoveries challenged the philosophical thinking of the day about emotion and thought. The beginning of the Enlightenment – and this is what Wayne uses as his starting point to unpeel the layers of creativity and explore physicality and the mind-body relationship.

What David Jays doesn’t mention in his review is anything about the larger than life set – a huge 100 foot long white mattress-looking ambient display, embedded with an array of white neon lights, that dominates the back of the stage and foregrounds the dancers – and is raised above them as they start the piece. It was developed by rAndom International at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York.

It works brilliantly, as an essential and interactive ingredient; synching with the dancers, providing pyrotechnics one moment and then a sky studded with shooting stars, the next; other times echoing Muybridge still shutters of body forms, always lighting the stage and dancers in magical ways. The dancers seem to disappear and reappear instantaneously behind and in front of it like molten drops. It is a truly remarkable piece of design, technology and engineering. Puts my research into ambient displays and behavior completely in the shadow.

What more can I say, other than Wayne is a genius.