a lot and also nothing

today I spent a lot of time thinking about things and doing some research, but i didn't end up actually doing anything tangible.

I found a fleamarket that's open tomorrow near me that's supposed to be pretty good where I can hopefully get a megaphone or loudspeaker for my twitter project. I also watched the pbs digital nation documentary. The documentary was pretty interesting although they seemed to spend most of their time focusing on stuff that wasn't so relevant to my project. I thought some of the stuff on virtual worlds was really interesting (where they interviewed the second life creator). I thought that they hold their meetings in the virtual space was pretty interesting, especially that the people having meetings in virtual spaces felt like moving from sitting at a table to sitting at some other table. That particularly seemed a little strange in a business environment. none of this really drove me towards a new project though.

later in the day I went downstairs to talk to a painter friend about where how to go forward, and I realized that all of the pushing that seems to be going on at parsons is trying to turn me into a really good artist through a structure, and I think this is where a lot of my frustrations with the system have come from. I feel like everyone keeps telling me different ways to go forward, but what i really think i need to do is just keep making these random things that come to me, and analyzing them, and seeing what happens. I know its inconvenient for thesis, but at this point it seems like doing these small experimental projects has led to a lot of opportunities, and has helped me a grow a lot both in terms of what I can do as well as how I understand what I want to do. I don't think that by trying to change my process overtly I'll get anywhere, since I don't even know what I would change, but by organically working through my process and letting it change itself I will hopefully arrive somewhere awesome. I guess its a hit or miss attempt, but I really don't know how else to approach this.

I started thinking about using internet data going through a router to drive a performance, so I started looking up how to monitor my own network data as well as how to hack and monitor router network data. I don't really know how I'm going to use it yet, but it seems somewhat interesting and at least a direction to go in. I know there have been some projects using this before (ping body comes to mind: http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/pingbody/index.html ), but i still want to investigate it anyway.

I have a terminal command running and monitoring my own http traffic and I have a little bit of ideas on how to montior all router traffic so things are progressing well. I also have an idea on how to get this into c++ but I haven't tried it yet so who knows if it will work. at the very least I have a few options.

anyway, thats what I did today. a little work and a few hours of thinking. things are going well I think. I feel like I have a very clear head on where parsons wants me to be going and where I want to be going and maybe a way to get there.


-zach