cyberbodies

Hi Guys,

If you are interested in checking out The Luddite 3000 and the adventures of Team Solder Sucker, please visit our blog:

http://luddite3000.blogspot.com/

-Kristina.

Hey,

Here’s the plan for the sudden motion detector (if you can call it that). It’s been chewing on my brain since the pull down resistor in Arduino tutorial 5:

Photos of the Arduino:

Basically, every time the Arduino is moved, the hoop swings around and completes the circuit for an instant, thus giving a digital reading of 1 instead of 0. We don’t really need to know how much it moves (like an accelerometer or a pressure sensor) at this point. We only need to know that it has been moved, so an analog output isn’t necessary for this SMD model.

The code:

int switchPin = 4;

void setup()
{
pinMode(switchPin, INPUT); // sets the digital pin as input to read motion sensor
Serial.begin(9600);
Serial.println(”Ready”);
}

void loop()
{ //motion sensor
if (digitalRead(switchPin) != 0)
{ delay(10);
if (digitalRead(switchPin) != 0)
{
Serial.println(”Movement!!”);
}
}
}

And the YouTube video.

Wanted to build a temp sensor like a thermostat, to further the idea of homeostasis, but had no idea where to start. Plus, a mercury switch probably isn’t the best thing to put in a kid’s toy. Moves around too much to work right.

- Pleo Group

The schematics for the Nike-iPod serial adapter and the Visual Basic program for posting the data gathered from the Nechrometer can be downloaded from the following locations:

http://froberto.dnsalias.org/shared/Nike_iPod_Serial_Schematic.pdf

and

http://froberto.dnsalias.org/shared/Nechrometer Output Program.zip

Gloria

Ok I know class is done and some of you have probably seen this, but here is another instance of our precious and beloved “humanity boundaries” becoming destabilized. The elephant appears to be painting itself (or another elephant), and it’s actually quite good. In fact, I’m pretty sure this elephant can paint far better than I can (blasted elephant). But it might just all be a hoax too I suppose. Or are we (me) just anthropomorphizing the elephant perhaps?

Jason

p.s. sorry for the cheezy byline but I couldn’t resist.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_LHoyB81LnE&feature=bz301

Here’s our Power Point presentation for the Nechrometer. It has several pictures we took during the process and a brief run-down of the concepts we hoped to cover. Unfortunately, despite trying to upload it directly, I keep getting a message saying I don’t have privileges for such an action. I’ve placed it in my home server, so you can now download it directly from here:

http://froberto.dnsalias.org/shared/Nechrometer_presentation.ppt

Gloria

Colleagues, fans, detractors, saboteurs - the web site for our critical toy is now available:

http://artsweb.uwaterloo.ca/~akhamisa/Freddy/index.shtml

It includes documentation concerning the ‘company’ mission statement, prototype vs ideal toy scenarios, prototype documentation, timelines, FAQ, and testimonials (and more!).

The photo journal of this project is also available at a Flickr nearest you:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23025882@N05

Some samples:

Feel free to leave any feedback in the comments section to this post. And be sure to give big ‘A’ props for the appeal that his site design exudes.

Adeel.Josh.Joe

The latest media darling is Thomas, a pregnant man. It seems that Thomas, who was born a woman and now lives his life as a man, is going to have a child. Unlike that last post, I feel like Haraway would love this new possibility.

Check out Thomas being interviewed on Oprah:

http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.aspx?id=5dd76f25-c4d3-4dcb-b8a0-4f8c411f6cdb

I think that Thomas has some cyborgian qualities. Do you?

-Kristina.

Hi everybody,

I saw this article a few days ago and was really moved by the concept of the book being reviewed. Poor Nim Chimpsky. Selfish, selfish humans!

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/03/31/Nim_Chimpsky/

G.

The body/mind divide has had me mulling over a similar divide for some time. This, actually, is a post I’ve tried writing at least eight times without actually being able to resolve even my own thoughts on the matter - every time I start thinking about this topic, it leads me somewhere new and equally nebulous.

The conceptual divide between the body and the soul parallels almost exactly the divide between mind and body - the body is often regarded as inferior or subordinate to the mind, which is a separate entity. The soul, likewise, is superior to the body in that it is eternal and indestructible, while the body comes from and returns to earth. This concept actually ties into gender theory, as, archetypally, the body is associated with “female” and the soul with the “male.” This occurs by way of classical mythological associations - the body is (in religious terms, literally) of the earth, while the soul is of the aether.

Most gods are, in their purest or original forms, hermaphroditic or a part of a male/female pair - the pairings, usually, consisting of the Earth-Mother and Sky-Father. There may be an original value judgement included in this assignation insofar as one is above the other, but the oldest myths tend to be about union and cooperation (even if it is in a cyclical process of alternating domination) - hence why hermaphroditic forms of gods tend to be older than male/female pairings within the same culture. However, as you progress through time (Plato and his followers had a prominent contribution here), you find that “earthly” concerns, represented by the female, were increasingly devalued in favour of ethereal, masculine, ideals. In most ancient religions, religious elders tended (regardless of the specific religion) to demote or entirely remove the female deities in these situations. Zeus, for instance, comes from a religion which originated northwest of Greece, and featured a female equal. When the Greeks took Zeus as their own, they left his partner behind and replaced her with the less-powerful Hera (as well as Demeter, Hestia, etc.. Further, Demeter herself was an all-powerful hermaphroditic god before she was appropriated by the Greeks and subordinated to Zeus). Judaism similarly removed the female aspect of its God (Sophia) somewhere around 600BCE. It’s a chicken-or-the-egg sort of argument… was the (earthly) body devalued because it was associated with the concept of “female,” or was it associated with the concept of “female” because it was devalued in a patriarchal society?

One last interesting (yeah, right) note on this topic is that there was only one goddess that Zeus truly feared - Aphrodite. Although later traditions tried to subordinate her to Zeus as well, older myths hold that she was much older than Zeus, and was the only god or goddess whose power threatened Zeus’. She was the goddess of beauty and passion (”love” is inaccurate; she was only the goddess of the carnal variety of love that drives humans insane with delusional passion, which was associated with beauty. She was not worshipped out of love, but out of fear - and begged not to interfere in mortal lives), and her power could drive even Zeus insane with lust (just think about how many affairs he had, and how often they end badly for everyone).

I promised myself I wasn’t going to get into Campbell or Jung here (I’m sure most people are tired of hearing me mention those names), but I’ve been thinking for quite some time about why the mind is so often valued above the body - and one thing I’ve decided is that it’s partially because the “mind” as we’ve been discussing it is the conscious mind only - the unconscious remains associated with the body, which largely goes about its business without awareness of the conscious mind; indeed, when the mind interferes in a process such as breathing (or even a learned process such as walking), the rhythm of that process is usually disturbed and the process becomes laboured until the mind slips beneath awareness once more. Because the unconscious is unknowable and (from the conscious’ point of view) essentially chaotic, the conscious mind fears it and constantly wrestles with it for control. What we see in the Zeus/Aphrodite relationship is the expression of this power struggle. Although Zeus rules the gods, including several who represent the body in more domestic forms, he is still fearful of Aphrodite’s ability to dominate and overpower his will.

Sigh. Once again I’ve gone somewhere completely different from the same starting point. Originally, I started thinking about the interaction of body & soul as it relates to mortification of the body as a means to expunge sins from the soul. Somehow that led to… this… Oh, well.

- David

I don’t really know why I’ve been stockpiling things to post on the blog without actually posting them (here’s a blatant lie to cover up an even more unpleasant truth: I’m lazy!), but now I’m going to go hyperactive and deal with a bunch o’ them.

To begin with, there are a couple of works of fiction that I have thought of (or discovered) in the course of this… uh… course.

One which I only discovered last week is Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer (who gets bonus points for being a Canadian who actually manages to make a living writing with nary a mention of bleak Maritime winters or dustbowl-era prairie towns that ostracize the unusual boy who lives just outside of town, has features that remind the protagonist of a wolf, and probably dies in the course of the novel). Mindscan is about a dude who uploads his brain into a computer to escape a dying body - something I find interesting (reading the summary on the front flap) is that it sounds like he just uploads it into an android body. He falls in love with a woman in the same situation whose son sues her for ‘cheating’ him out of his inheritence, and the plot gets extra-thick when his ‘obsolete’ meat-self (sent to die on the dark side of the moon) takes hostages demanding that he be given back his “personhood.” The hardcover of Mindscan is currently on the discount table at Coles (and presumably Chapters) bookstores for $7.99.

Next up is a novel I’ve been thinking about in relation to this course since last semester: The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. The novel takes place in a post-apocalyptic society called “Newf” which is just northeast of “Labrador,” which is just northeast of a vast black-glass desert which is the result of a nuclear exchange in the past. Because of the massive levels of nuclear fallout, mutations are extremely common in both flora and fauna. The society which grew in Newf following the ‘dark times’ is obsessed with the idea that mankind was created in God’s image, and so has very strict definitions about what is an “acceptable” form for each animal. Crops and animals are destroyed if they are not “natural” (although there is some hint that politically-powerful individuals bend the rules to their own benefit when, for instance, their horses are unnaturally large and thus more useful). Human childbirths are never announced until the child has been inspected by a representative of the state - if any measurement is outside of acceptable parameters, the child is removed from the home and sent into the wilderness with the other human mutations (some of whom only have an extra toe or unusually long limbs). The plot concerns a group of children in a single community who develop psychic powers (seemingly as a natural evolution, rather than a mutation caused by radiation). Fascinating discourse on the concept of “naturality.”

In my next post: I ramble, using my background in mythology, as if people actually care about my nonsense!