Archive → April, 2010
Revisit: The First Step Into Silence
One of my more interesting writing experiments, Silence Theory, began shortly after I moved to Jersey City, then for an affordable life while attending school in the Village. This was the first post, written about 2.5 years ago. It seems so long ago, but I feel like I still have so much to think about in this area.
October 7th, 2007 in “Silence Theory”:
I’ve begun this blog in an effort to explore a phenomenon. Perhaps this is more personal than universal. If you’ve found me, I hope you find interest here.
This began with a load of laundry.
Laundromats, as you may be aware, are generally mechanism-filled spaces of suds and socks. The audible pangs of the washer to the creaks of every drier can make the visit a session in audio pollution very, very quickly.
What I did to change that was wear a set of earplugs for the session – a serendipitous find in my bag – and took note of the immediate calm I found myself in. The machines became more of a distant, indiscernible cloud… my tactile sense kicked up with the rumbles of rotation. I enjoyed the distance between myself and the conversations in the room, which were beyond my business, you know?
Entranced by this effect, I tried it again on the LightRail, traveling from my downtown apartment in Jersey City to Hoboken. A nearby toddler began to voice his upset with Thomas the Tank Engine when the plugs went in, and I was blissfully in my own, yet shared space. Again, there was the lack of machinery (moving trains tend to squeal and gurgle) and a deadening of all frequencies, making the space seem less aggravated, less uninvitational.
On the PATH, there was a similar feeling of disconnect. In a more dense space, there was less sense of selfness, but I was even more grateful for the separation between my ears and the metal grinding of the PATH. (If you’ve been, you know the shrieks of the track, high-pitched and obtrusive.)
These were all instances of silence and my own stillness, however. As I walked from the PATH station to school, I found that the earplugs themselves increased my sense of “inner sounds”, such as my breath and footstep reverberations. I could also feel my pulse within my head, which was alarming until I realized that it was, really, just my own, and it’s been happening without my notice for many years now. Initially, I had reservations about wearing the plugs in the city – would be too unaware of my surroundings that my safety would be forfeit? Somehow, that was not the case. Over the day, I had adjusted to my senses of touch and sight to accommodate for the “loss” of outer hearing, and I feel that I was acceptably attenuated to the new perception recipe I was stirring. The other aspect of ear plugs is that, although many high frequencies feel rolled-off, the impacts of normal and loud sounds generally do make it through. If I am in the city and a car approaches, for example, I can hear it and be aware, but it is a softer, round sound when it gets to me. I have the suddenness without the aggression.
I am interested in a less invasive sound experience while in the city and elsewhere. Perhaps further study will awaken the truths behind what we hear, our choices, and the outcome of our daily experiences.
*Disclaimer: I don’t recommend wearing earplugs for long amounts of time unless they are manufactured for that purpose. It can, in the least, be uncomfortable, but poor plugs inserted improperly run the risk of hurting your ears. Be safe, check things out on the packaging or look them up on the Web before delving into your own sound space experiments.
Rebirth, to Death, to Rebirth
For the next few days, I’d like to spend a moment each day rehashing a post from one of my original blogs before they all evolved into my shiny Multiblog. Today’s is from almost two years ago, back when I was still completing my graduate studies at NYU. I had started “Interaction Faction” as a means for venting my game development and design snafus, which were daily at the time. I was also angrier/more emotional about programming back then, probably because my thesis was my first serious coding project.
From May 8th, 2008, on “Interaction Faction”:
Taking a moment from my critique of game design, in an hour of desperation I offer to you my ray of hope through this epic retelling of adversity.
Death. All I could think about was how to throw my shiny UT3 collector’s box around my apartment, as the editor, just days before a presentation of a project, would not allow me to look at the properties of my builder brushes. Oh, the window would show, but you know those delicious dark gray sub-boxes? They remained unopenable, shut like a nun’s panties. Crawling around the UT3 forums proved futile until one post, one booming voice echoing:
“When judgment is at hand, delete the UTEditor.ini in the UTGAME\Config files in your Documents folder, for the righteous shall be saved.”
Well, I wasn’t saved yet – it didn’t work. HOWEVER, deleting UTEditor.ini along with its cohorts UTEditorUserSettings.ini and UTEditorKeyBindings.ini was successful. The editor was restored to harmony and joyous modding.
I hope this solution also helps those with unreasonably skewed brushes and other varieties of bizarre parameters that the editor saves for the following session… for your convenience!
Raleigh!
I blasted back from the conference on Thursday, but I’ve been in nonstop catch-up-and-connect-with-new-folks mode since I got back. Let me just say this: TGC was a GREAT experience for me, and I can’t wait for next year’s conference to roll around! I’m also thinking of going to the game conference in Atlanta in October (SIEGE), which promises to be equally, if not more, awesome.
I was originally turned off to Atlanta after visiting the Georgia Aquarium on a Sunday (around Valentine’s Day, if you must know). We drove around to check the area out, but it seemed, well, dead. If you lived/played in Greenwich Village for a few years, like I did, you kind of have an expectation of what a “real” city is supposed to be like. Walking through Washington Square Park, hearing who was jamming before I stepped into an over-crowded studio/classroom for some music tech lecture or whatnot… that was my life for two years. It was also the best part of my commute into the city from Jersey City. Anyway, we must’ve been cruising through Atlanta’s financial district or something, but we couldn’t find where the hip kids were at. Maybe it’s more of a commuter city? I was creeped out by the lack of people walking around on a fairly sunny day, but maybe it’s just not that kind of scene. I don’t know. I’m still bugging my Atlanta-prone friends about where I should’ve been exploring.
The real push to attend TGC, aside from networking in the game industry I call my “home”, was to check out Raleigh. For better or worse, I know that I need to think about where I should relocate at the end of the year. Not that Spartanburg has done me wrong, particularly, but I know that my options have been extremely limited, even as a technologist, and that telecommuting for most of my work has been an eye-opener into what I value about work. Some of it doesn’t need an office (getting to know people), but some… well, maybe some does. (You know that chit-chat when you just get in, or those conversations over lunch where you discover that your cubicle mate has the same breed of cat that you do? I don’t have those serendipitous face-to-face moments. Ever. It’s always a voice or an asynchronous exchange.) This isn’t just a matter of telecommuting, but probably a facet of being a contractor – your time is always billed, and who wants to get billed for chit-chat? You’re more of a cog in a machine than a member of the work family, which is something I miss about studio life. However, I have seen consultants in I.T. become part of the teams that are also their clients. Perhaps it’s a matter of culture, but I’m sure that seeing my bright, cheery, I-totally-love-working-in-games-even-doing-this-boring-task-How-are-you-today face would be a positive asset if face-to-face contact was more common.
Anyway, there’s no guarantee that I would gain any of this by relocating. More and more studios rely on telecommuters to keep overhead/office expenses down, so it may just be a sign of the times that so much of my work has come through that venue.
The other half of it, aside from “career positioning” or what have you, is the area. I lived in Sussex, NJ, where there were cows. Some people (non-NJ natives) still don’t believe there were cows, or that I didn’t immediately know what “exit I was off of the Turnpike.” That one is so old. Please, give it a rest. I lived in Pennsylvania for my undergrad (small school) and Jersey City with a commute into Manhattan for graduate studies (NYU… big school). Despite living in so many different places, I’m just not sure where I belong.
I really enjoyed my time in Raleigh, though. So clean, so friendly… I was just surprised. Oh, and those parks throughout the city! And trees! There’s a lot I haven’t touched on yet, so I’m planning a return trip in a few months to see if it’s where I should settle, perhaps for more than a year or two! I’ve been a nomad for the past bunch of years. I hope to change that. Maybe I’ll figure this out before my lease on this apartment ends!
