Twine, the Video-Game Technology for All

Perhaps the most surprising thing about “GamerGate,” the culture war that continues to rage within the world of video games, is the game that touched it off. Depression Quest, created by the developers Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey and Isaac Schankler, isn’t what most people think of as a video game at all...

To read the entire article please click HERE. 

play/search - A Quest

This Alternate Reality Game/Quest is offered as an amusing challenge to all (science/art) players of good will...a new game is afoot...let's see where it leads...

A Quest…(a treasure hunt)... Find the best source(s) of funding for an initial play/search project entitled...

(Please read the link material and watch the videos before embarking on the quest.)

Here are a few clues…

…in the form of questions, observations, quotes, links to websites, articles and videos. It is important to read the articles and watch the videos all the way through.

What could “play/search” refer to? Several things? Do we have a fork in the road here?

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
Yogi Berra

An opinion: Most scientific research, even “basic” research, conducted inside of established universities and other types of conventional academic institutions and funded by either the government or various grant awarding foundations is severely limited by self imposed constraints on the types of questions allowed to be asked and the standardized methods used to acquire evidence.

As Joseph Chilton Pearce said, “Science should be a key unlocking phenomena, instead of a lock shutting out any phenomena not fitting its keys of preconception”.

On the opening page of Part II of Supernormal Dean Radin quotes William James…

“There is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible.”

Also from Joseph Chilton Pearce…

“(William Blake said that) Ordinary seeing is mechanical and dead; vision is seeing that the universe is the material for creation, not the fixed deadness of matter. Blake lost his argument, to say the least. Indeed there was no contest. We are now living in the pandemonium he foresaw should Newton, Locke, and company win the day, as they surely did. The “Enlightenment” proved no boon to man – just one more frying pan to switch into – and it may prove the final fire.”

Check out… CHM Revolutionaries: Reality is Broken- Jane McGonigal with NPR's Laura Sydell at this link…http://youtu.be/ZjSVo8N31r4

“Science is truth with her wings clipped”.
Austin O’Malley, Keystones of Thought

Check out… Games for Change: Solving the World's Biggest Problems Through Alternate Realities: Jane McGonigal…here… http://youtu.be/yLUdxqYmDdc

Institute For The Future: http://www.iftf.org/focus-area/global-landscape/

“Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.”
Wilhelm Reich

Mind/Shift: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/what-makes-an-extreme-learner/

Extreme Learners Overview: http://youtu.be/FYoWKEZ0Xuw

What are TechShops (http://techshop.ws/ ), MakerSpaces (http://makezine.com/2013/05/22/the-difference-between-hackerspaces-makerspaces-techshops-and-fablabs/ ), and Learning Shelters (http://news.typeamachines.com/the-learning-shelter/ )?

An Infinite Game of Global Unity: http://youtu.be/1Jj7lT7ED_M

What would scientific play/search instead of scientific research look like?

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny!’” 
Isaac Asimov

Cinemorphics methodology, overall approach and “atmosphere”…a key clue in the play/search quest?

Is Science (with a capital "S"), one of humankind's stories, a mythological undertaking worthy of a noble quest...(and...a construct subject to a re-write)?

What if Baobah Novas Formas de Inteligência turned "essential" experimental protocols upside down?

Consider radical quantum theater projects as play/search?

Baobah Novas Formas de Inteligência - Cia Lápis de Seda - http://youtu.be/7-i9TYd_Bvo

Check out…

http://www.dsiam.org/ , 

http://www.theatrehorizon.org/education/autism.html , 

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AlzheimersCommunity/alzheimers-disease-improv-helps-patients-live-moment/story?id=14307386

Quantum Theater: http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3585&context=etd_theses

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” 
Albert Einstein

Quantum Aesthetics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorio_Morales

What part does this concept play in the quest?

"Trans-intelligence: New Approaches to Aptitude Formation"

Propose definitions for "play/search" and "trans-intelligence".

Draw a detailed treasure map showing how to get to the funding source(s) and complete the quest(s)...please indicate all emerging forks... 

The Crack in the Cosmic Egg

“We are limited by our agreements on possibility. Agreement is a common exclusion of alternate possibilities. Agreement is the cement of social structure. Two or three gathered together, agreeing on what they are after, may create a subset in which their goals can be achieved, even though folly in the eyes of the world. The world in this case means a set of expectancies agreed upon, a set excluding other possibilities.”
Joseph Chilton Pearce, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: New Constructs of Mind and Reality

I read The Crack in the Cosmic Egg over forty years ago when it was first published. I have found since then, that the book seems to mysteriously re-enter my life every few years, seemingly to remind me where parts of my thinking came from. Either I will my tattered original “lost” copy behind some other book on a hopelessly disorganized shelf, or find someone else’s “lost” copy forgotten in a coffee house, or receive a new edition as a gift, or turn up a PDF…click HERE…of the entire book on the internet while searching for something else (which just happened and prompted this post). In any case…check it out if you have not read it. If you don’t, it will eventually “find” you.

A relatively new edition with a new Foreword and Preface may be found HERE.

8 New Ways of Looking at Intelligence

The science of learning is a relatively new discipline born of an agglomeration of fields: cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience. As with anything to do with our idiosyncratic and unpredictable species, there is still a lot of art, especially in teaching. But the science of learning can offer some surprising new perspectives:

For the rest of the article please click HERE.

Ellen Langer's Work

One day in the fall of 1981, eight men in their 70s stepped out of a van in front of a converted monastery in New Hampshire. They shuffled forward, a few of them arthritically stooped, a couple with canes. Then they passed through the door and entered a time warp. Perry Como crooned on a vintage radio. Ed Sullivan welcomed guests on a black-and-white TV. Everything inside — including the books on the shelves and the magazines lying around — were designed to conjure 1959. This was to be the men’s home for five days as they participated in a radical experiment, cooked up by a young psychologist named Ellen Langer.
For the rest of the article please visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/magazine/what-if-age-is-nothing-but-a-mind-set.html?ref=magazine&_r=1
This work bears a strong relationship to Cinemorphics. I discuss it in Method Aging and the Infinite game. 
http://cinemorphics.blogspot.com/2011/02/method-aging-and-infinite-game.html

Thomas Nagel: Thoughts Are Real

The philosopher Thomas Nagel’s new book, “Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False,” restores the primal force of a great old philosophical word, “metaphysics.” He starts with a boldly discerning look at that strange creature, mankind, and comes to some remarkable speculations about who we are and what our place is in the universe. Incidentally (and seemingly unintentionally) he illuminates, along the way, some significant aspects of the cinema, and of art overall.
To read the entire article, please click HERE.

Conscious Realism

Quantum Self-shifting

Covert Cinemorphics

The term Covert Cinemorphics can refer to a variety of applications of the Cinemorphic methodology, but two very useful and effective ones are…

1. Covert Rehearsal, which refers to the practice of performing a behavior “in your head” rather than actually…secretly rather than in the open. It has been demonstrated that this technique, which uses imagery, visualization, sensory imagination, etc. can be effective in improving sports performance, musical performance, getting rid of phobias, getting over shyness, etc…a valuable tool for re-writing and re-enacting your self.

2. Covert Third Party Conditioning (Shaping), which refers to re-writing and modifying somebody else’s behavior rather than your own. This type of conditioning, of course, was used on you as a child by your parents, and later by your peers and culture to shape who you became before you realized that you could consciously deconstruct, the reconstruct your self. Everyone does this all the time unconsciously…in marriages, working relationships, child rearing, etc., but it is possible to use the techniques of positive and negative reinforcement, successive approximation , aversion training, etc. consciously to fix some problem or just to play. Of course, manipulating someone else’s behavior just for the fun of it raises ethical questions, but is evident on various scales throughout our society…think ad campaigns, political propaganda, Facebook manipulating emotions by varying what’s in our news feeds, etc.

Persona Play - The Baobah Sessions

Cinemorphics Exercises, Games & Experiments...The Baobah Sessions, September 2014, Florianopolis, Brazil. Here are some videos from the seminar and workshop featuring the Baobah team. All 12 videos may be found at: https://www.youtube.com/user/cinemorphics

This one was inspired by and is dedicated to Federico Fellini who said, "A different language is a different vision of life". The music is from 8½. The new characters devise scenarios in which they can interact with each other in character. One for Janis...

The Baobah Sessions

Edwina and I just got back to San Francisco from a very successful two week Cinemorphics seminar and workshop at what I am now thinking of as the Baobah Art & Physics Labs (my take on Baobah Novas Formas de Inteligência) in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. Watch for exciting game changing developments and projects coming from Baobah Director Jussara Figueira and her team, Ana Ciscato, Claudia Passos, Emmanuel Bohrer Junior, Glaucia Grigolo, Marisa Naspolini and Ramon Noro (all pictured). Quite a group!

Train Your Brain To Let Go Of Habits - 10 Methods For Creating New Neural Pathways

When you understand how neural pathways are created in the brain, you get a front row seat for truly comprehending how to let go of habits. Neural pathways are like superhighways of nerve cells that transmit messages. You travel over the superhighway many times, and the pathway becomes more and more solid. You may go to a specific food or cigarettes for comfort over and over, and that forms a brain pathway. The hopeful fact, however, is that the brain is always changing and you can forge new pathways and create new habits. That’s called the neuroplasticity of the brain.
I used to drive with one foot on the brake and the other on the accelerator, and I wanted to train myself to drive with one foot only. It took some time, as I had a strong neural pathway for two-footed driving. But because I had the will to do it, I built a new pathway, and I rewired or reprogrammed my brain. You can remove a behavior or thought or addictions directly from the brain.
Because of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ever-changing potentials, anything is possible. People who’ve had strokes can retrain their brains to function again by building new pathways. Smokers and overeaters and many others can learn new behaviors and attitudes and can transform their lives.
Whether you work with others on their habits or you work with your own (or both), you can apply these understandings to boost your success.
Some Powerful Ways to Retrain the Brain

1. Identity the habit you’d like to transform and set the intention.

You may remember the punch line “The light bulb has to want to change.”  You have to have a high intention to change as well. If there is this high intention, then creating new pathways in your brain is bound to happen.

2. Observe what the old habit or pathway is doing in your life.

Look at feelings, thoughts, and how the body is responding to the habit, and see what results you’re creating in your life. Be the witness, and  be aware.

3. Shift your focus.

This is very important. To create a new neural pathway, you take the focus off the old habit, and then that old habit eventually falls away. Don’t pay attention to the donuts and cakes. Take your awareness and focus it on good, wholesome, healthy delicious foods.

4. Use your imagination.

You can build new neural pathways not only with new behaviors, but through the imagination. Just imagine the new behaviors over and over and over. Keep repeating that in your mind so you build new pathways. Focus your mind and retrain your brain.

5. Interrupt your thoughts and patterns when they arise.

Say “no” or “cancel” when an old thought or impulse comes in, and say, “I don’t have to do that anymore.” Then turn toward the new neural pathway you’re building and keep on going in the right direction.

6. Use aversion therapy.

This isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It’s an optional path. I like to call it “the maggots on the chocolate cake technique.” I used to love candies and sweets, and when I stopped eating them, I still had to pass by them when I walked by the candy store in town. I used aversion to train my brain to walk on by: “That’s junk,” I said to myself. “It’s made in factories, sickeningly sweet, makes me feel bad. The company makes it so sweet just to addict buyers. I don’t want any of that.” So I talk myself out of it. I’ve use it with many clients (only those who say they want it) on smoking, junk food, cocaine and many other behaviors.

7.  Create a specific plan and choose what to do instead.

When you get specific, it’s easier to build new neural pathways. You “make it official.”  Decide if you want to exercise instead of overeating or if you want to eat fruit instead of candy. Just keep focused on the new choice.  You may want to create affirmations and anchors to reinforce your choices. This can be “I’m free or “I’m in control.” Reinforce this with energy therapies like EFT or other techniques.

8. Transform the obstacles.

Look at what’s in the way. Look at secondary gain – what you’ve been getting out of the old habits or pathways. Look at the stress in your life and how you can handle it differently. Get your mind in the place of possibility. Handle the emotions and thoughts and get on a new superhighway in your mind.

9. Connect with your Higher Source for inspiration and support.

Listen to our guidance. Know you have the Force within you, and therefore you have great power. Meditation creates new pathways and brain changes. Actual studies have been done on the brains of monks to show meditation’s effect on neural circuits of the brain.

10. Transform and make the shift.

Know that transformation is always possible and that you can create new brain pathways whenever you’re ready to make the shift. When you keep your mind in the “I can do it!” space, you get a clear sense that you’re done with the old and on a new beam now.
Some people feel we’re being rewired spiritually for anew era. There’s great upheaval now in our world. And there’s a process of transformation happening on earth in which huge changes are taking place for all of humanity. You have to be present in the moment, overcome your fears, and get to know the Infinite source so you can be a vehicle for the light to predominate on the earth.

From: http://themindunleashed.org/2014/03/train-brain-let-go-habits-10-methods-creating-new-neural-pathways.html

Play Intelligence Theory

Play Intelligence
James Findlay

Play intelligence is best understood from a position of unlearning what we already know about play and intelligence. Our knowledge about these two concepts may be advanced, normal, or mere opinion. But in all cases, as adults, in learning something new, we need to free up previously “learned” knowledge, opinions, habits, emotions, cultural distortions etc, so that we have the “open” space to understand something new.
The theory defines intelligence in a manner which will radically challenge our world view. Furthermore, it informs educational researchers and the general public of the importance of play.This is the only concrete model in the world which demonstrates the relationship between play and intelligence called “The Meta model”. Pioneering and innovative new research into Play Intelligence may turn out to be the most important theory on intelligence yet.
The Theory of Play Intelligence explains and demonstrates:

• The building blocks behind play, intelligence, and human abilities.
• The science of play and intelligence.
• The importance of play for improving many of the brains functions.
• The importance of playing with our newborn child.
• How to improve human abilities.
• Why it is important to introduce or reintroduce play in schools.
• Learn to create play in different environments.
• Effective ways in solving problems.
• How to play with stress in stressful environments.
• The higher values of play.
• How to learn, and increase memory.
• how to tap inner human resources to improve our lives.
• How to improve intelligence.

Play Intelligence:

• Shows the general scientific relationship of play and intelligence
• Confirms the recent play research on neuroscience and the brain.
• Explains the importance of the “code of play” between mother and infant.
• Demonstrates the relationship of play to human abilities.
• Gives meaning to the influence of play in education, society and culture.
• Provides a series of examples of how to play under stressful situations.
• Explains how to meta communicate with their environment.
• Outlines how to contact the essential element of play within oneself and others.
• Explains the interconnectedness of play in thoughts, emotion, and environment.
• Creates a new world view of intelligence and play.

For more info go to: http://www.playfoundation.com/

Non-Dual Intelligence

Schrödinger’s Cat

How was Marlon Brando like Schrödinger’s Cat?

For one thing, they both needed an audience...

SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

A "Not-Doing" Worth Doing

UN-OCCUPIED, UN-EMPLOYED: Don't Just Do Something! Stand There!

In 1994 Bernard McGrane published a book entitled “The Un-TV and the 10MPH Car, Experiments in Personal Freedom and Everyday Life”. In it he describes some strange and very cool experiments that he has his students fool around with that have some entertaining things to say about this whole carnival side show we find ourselves mixed up in.

In the first experiment…Un-Occupied, Un-Employed: Don’t Just Do Something! Stand There!…he has them “do nothing, be un-occupied and un-employed for ten minutes and see what you can see”. This was to be done in a relatively busy public place and was to be taken quite literally…they were to stand there at semi-attention, eyes not wandering about, for a full ten minutes. They were not allowed to pretend they were waiting for someone, if asked…that would be “doing waiting”…they were not allowed to pretend they were sightseeing or just relaxing…that would be “doing sightseeing” or “doing relaxing”, etc. They were to do this for the full ten minutes….the time requirement was strict. As McGrane says…”I looked at them a little like a cross between a meditator and a zombie”.

Try this…have some friends try it…but not in a group…and see what happens. Get McGrane’s book if you can…out of print but available all over the net…and check out other people’s experiences.

Doing a “Not doing” in this way is worth the effort.

Temporary Autonomous Zones

Burning Man - An archetypal T.A.Z.

A Temporary Autonomous Zone (T.A.Z.), first described by Hakim Bey, is a liberated area “of land, time or imagination” where one can be for something, not just against, and where new ways of being human together can be explored and experimented with. Locating itself in the cracks and fault lines in the global grid of control and alienation, a T.A.Z. is an eruption of free culture where life and creativity are experienced at maximum intensity. It should feel like an exceptional party where for a brief moment our desires are made manifest and we all become the creators of the art of everyday life.

"Caged creative brilliance unleashed! I feel like a new kind of life form..." 
Anonymous "Burner"

For more please visit:
http://satoritango.blogspot.com/2005/10/temporary-autonomous-zones_23.html

Finite & Infinite Games...as dance...

An interdisciplinary dance film, Finite & Infinite Games, is a celebration of unity and color. Filmed at Judson Memorial Church in 2010 and premiered at Art Basil Switzerland, Games draws inspiration from philosopher James P. Carse’s “Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility.” The suite of nine dances, directed and choreographed by Katherine Helen Fisher, explore the individual’s quest for generativity within community.

Visual artist C. Finley created the 48′x12′ non-repetitive geometric painted canvas as a comparative replication of the dance. Costumes by fashion designer Gai Mattiolo. Film by RJ Muna. Edited by Sam Chase. Score by Phillip Glass, Moondog, Michael Nyman, Riff-Ola, Food. A thisiswater Production.

Live performances of Games were presented at Judson Church and at Danspace Project in 2011.

Age Hacking with AAARG!

Back in 2011, when I published The Tao of Aging and Method Aging and the Infinite Game, I planned a third book to complete what I envisioned being a trilogy about aging. I took a turn in the road and found myself making a film (totally unrelated to aging) instead. Other zigzags have appeared since (e.g. an upcoming visit to Brazil...more on that in another post), but despite these meanderings in the drift, I can now announce that the third volume in the aging trilogy, AAARGH! Action Aging Alternate Reality Game, will appear before the end of the year. 

For info on the other two, please visit: http://www.amazon.com/Charles-Webb/e/B004L6SY7U/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0