Firstly, horror in fiction.

While all fiction seeks to get the audience to identify with the characters of the story, to empathise with them, but in horror fiction the audience must be able to feel the same emotions as the characters on screen.

Whether they are ghosts climbing out of your television or zombies rising from the graves to devour your tasty brains, the intended reactions to these horrors in question comprise of emotions like fear, nausea, shuddering, repulsion and revulsion (not to mention lots and lots of screaming!). This kind of ‘mirroring-effect’, where the audience feels the same emotions as the characters when they see the horror is an important key feature of horror fiction.

All three horror movies have in common in that their horrors (what I will be calling the ghost/monsters/zombies from now on) are threatening, either physically or psychologically.

They are also impure, violating generally accepted schemes of cultural categorization.
Objects that are without form, incomplete representatives of their class (e.g. rotting flesh, missing shapes from a whole object)

Secondly, Huizinga’s magic circles, and how Man uses them, consciously or not

Huizinga said that when”competitive play begins; the ordinary world is suspended as players step into its magic circle, existing in a different time and space.” (Huizinga 1938, p. 18). By space, I mean the area that is set aside for the play to take place. By stepping out of this sacred space reserved solely for play, the magic is broken. Consider the soccer field which is outlined by four white lines, where play is immediately stopped when the ball lands outside it. The same goes for the card-table; leaving it results in no dealing of cards to the player. Within these magic circles play imposes its own rules and regulations, creating order and opening up to players another level of consciousness. With this, however, players now have a motivation to win, an objective to fulfil: agon.

The winner of competitive play would be able to claim that he or she is superior to the rest in some form or another, therefore establishing a sense of order, a sort of social hierarchy where all the players accept. Inevitably, culture would arise from such play. Different cultures have different play and rituals, and are formed by them as Huizinga wrote. With different cultures comes different needs, and the way people design their products to suit their material and spiritual needs are different from culture to culture.

Design is not an activity solely reserved for designers, but a shared activity for those who design products, architecture, and even environments, and those who use them. Play as a way of design sharpens the skills and knowledge applied in designing all matters of things. The use of agon in play which determines a winner also determines how design would be influenced and used in the social order and culture.

Thirdly, that numbers and coincidence are fascinating, for they could very be signs of a higher being, but I’m still not convinced. Let me explain.

"That a particular specified event or coincidence will occur is very unlikely. That some astonishing unspecified events will occur is certain. That is why remarkable coincidences are noted in hindsight, not predicted with foresight."--David G. Myers

There is exactly a single number, namely 3816547290, with the following two properties: The number contains each digit from 0 to 9 exactly once and for every N from 1 to 10, the first N digits of the number are divisible by N. Which in layman terms means 38 can be divided by 2, 381 by 3 and so on and so forth (AGRH maths makes my head hurt). Plain coincidence?

Some HTI2 presentations come across as slightly flamboyant. There is no such thing as coincidence? As mentioned in the Numbers and Tarots presentation slides for example, math can indeed be found everywhere. In fact, mathematics can indeed be said to be divine, for there is no beginning or no end. Every single thing happens for a reason, being linked to numbers. There is always a possibility something to happen, and able to be justified with numbers.

The Earth is the third closest planet to the Sun and it just so happens to be the planet we live on. This is no coincidence. The Earth is the only planet in our Solar System capable of supporting the human race. Its temperature, proximity to the Sun, mass, density, chemical composition and even its size are all important factors in allowing life to develop, and subsequently in shaping the human race.

The universe, our galaxy, our Solar System and the Earth-Moon double planet system demonstrate some remarkable evidence of intelligent design. Taken separately, each characteristic is highly improbable by random chance. When taken together, the probability is so small as to be seemingly impossible - by random chance. Could this be a sign of the divine?

That I concur, is a very astonishing coincidence, so much so that people choose to believe an alternative explanation, that Earth was designed by an intelligent Creator is a more realistic explanation. Either way, one must admit that we are a product of a miracle – but was it a miracle of chance or a miracle of design? We may never know, but now look at this.

The coincidences are predictable and we are the ones who give them meaning. Given the fact that there are billions of people and the possible number of meaningful coincidences is millions of billions, it is inevitable that many people will experience some very weird and uncanny coincidences every day.

Some people find it surprising that there are more than 16 million others on the planet who share their birthday. At a typical soccer game with 50,000 fans, most fans are likely to share their birthday with about 135 others in attendance. (The notable exception will be those born on February 29. There will only be about 34 fans born on that day, because of leap years. NO IT’S NOT A COINCIDENCE.)

Some people tend to link numbers to events that happened and tried to justify the link just through numbers. For example, Uri Geller thought that the number 11 was no coincidence to the tragic 9/11 terrorist attack on New York.

Here were some examples he cited out of a huge list, no doubt to try and further cement his theory about numbers.

The Twin Towers looks like the number 11 when standing side by side, or that the first plane to hit the towers was Flight 11 by American Airlines or AA, where A=1st letter in the alphabet so we have again 11:11. Also, the State of New York was also the 11^th State added to the Union.

But see here, accumulating more findings like these coincidences between the number 11 and other things should be effortless, since there is innumerable stuff that can be made to relate in some fashion to the number 11 (or just about any other number or word).

If we start hounding for stuff that seem relevant but don't fit the pattern, we will soon see that there is nothing special about Geller's list or the number 11(Oh wow, the length of my ‘imperial weapon’ is a grand total of 11 inches). Only by focusing on anything that we can fit to our belief and ignoring everything that doesn't fit can we make these coincidences seem meaningful. Let me quote Francis Bacon.

"It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives." --Francis Bacon

What Geller and other numerologists or urban myths are doing is a game, a game played with numbers and with people's minds. Well I don’t think so much of these ‘number’, they are just coincidences, good and simple. I hereby step out of this magic circle, breaking its illusion and denying its existence. Of course there will always be people inside this magic circle, playing its game, so what’s not to say I have escaped from this magic circle just to step into another one?

Maybe this is just another coincidence? (MINDSCREW)

Fourthly, Man’s desire to be God-like

Back during the Renaissance (French for "rebirth"; Italian: Rinascimento, from ri- "again" and nascere "be born"), when Spiritual alchemists who believed that quintessence, or the soul, is formed inside the body, and that it affects our imagination and our mind.

They wanted to get closer to the celestial, to be closer to the divine. Some even applied lead to their meals, saying that it added a rosy complexion to their skin as they died slowly of lead poisoning. That was then. Now, things had changed. Or did they?

Current ethical issues are now being raised by stem cell research, where ‘designer babies’ are now very possible. If the parents wanted their children to look like Brad Pitt, with the eyes of Heath Ledger and lips of Angelina Jolie, complete with a mop of hair like Jay Reno’s, it can be done. But the question everyone was asking: Should it be done?

Not very different now, isn’t it. Man is still searching to be perfect, making the ideal body for the ideal soul. Nothing’s changed, and Man will continue spending the rest of his time perfecting what he perceives to be the ideal Human in the ideal World.

Lastly, is that most of Man’s brilliance comes from ass-pulling. Yes, ASS-PULLING.

Let me clarify by explaining that ass-pulling: Commonly used in situations where a person may have procrastinated or waited until the last minute to prepare anything, or is put in position where they must perform or answer questions on things they have no idea about. Or what I call pullitoutofyourassism.

Pullitoutofyourassism is what usually happens at the end of every student’s seminar presentations. When they are put forth a question that they aren’t familiar about, they often think up something on the spot to get the irritating person off their backs. But ah, this is where the magic begins!

Humans are a cesspool of knowledge, due to us being naturally curious about everything under the sun, which is why we are so afraid of the unknown, especially when we cannot explain it logically or scientifically. As I explained in my Horror post, when humans are pushed they display the fight or flight response. We students obviously couldn’t escape from the lecture (flight), so we are forced to resort to pullitoutofyourassism (fight!). But it’s this moment in time where the Human brilliance really shines through, where students actually dig from some part of their knowledge, to compile it into something intelligible and actually answer the question, making sense (somewhat) to the audience.

There are many examples in History where people actually came up with ingenious inventions/ideas when under a tight schedule/situation. For example, ice cream was served on dishes before 1904. At this particularly 1904 World's Fair, a stall selling ice cream was doing such good business that they were quickly running out of dishes. The neighbouring stall wasn't doing so well; selling Zalabia a kind of wafer thin waffle from Persia and the stall owner came up with the idea of rolling them into cone shapes and popping the ice cream on top. Thus the ice cream cone was born. Potato chips were invented by a Chef who was fed up by a customer’s fussy requests about the potato fries being too thick. His solution after being rejected many times? Thinly sliced potatoes that became a hit, eventually becoming potato chips.

Which brings us to the word, creativity, yes, creativity. When people are backed into a corner that is when they have to think out of the box in order to get out of the sticky mess they are in. That is when ideas and solutions not often thought of is usually formed.

Theory of Genre

Genres, genres, genres. Oh what would humans be without genres. Let me first say that no idea in the world is ever original. Yes, you heard me right, since Humans started dragging their sorry asses out from the dank caves and started what we call Civilisation, we have started adapting ideas from Nature and one another as ideas and solutions to our problems.

Let me start with a simple, personal recount of my childhood memories. I was playing soccer with my mates when inspiration in the form of a physical soccer ball struck me. An idea, a song composition, came into my head. I rushed to write it down, and the next day proudly presented it to my music teacher, who promptly shot me down, telling me it was very similar to a song written in the 1970s. I later found out years later, a sudden epiphany in my father’s car, that I was brought up listening to old English songs since birth, and that I had unconsciously taken elements, put them together to form a new idea, albeit a new combination made out of old elements.

Genres, are categories for works of literature, but too can be used for categorizing music as well as games. I call bull-crap on all that. To be as long as a genre has its content, anything can be a genre.

Which brings me to my point, that no idea/genre is ever original, and the current movies/ ideas/songs/inventions/games all incorporate some form of mimicking of certain elements (RPG games, same old classes?) and rehashed clichés. That said, having knowledge of all these elements is very, very important. After all, this knowledge is what makes up the basic foundations of an idea. But if one wants to have an idea that is different from the norm, or what they call (very cliché again) thinking out of the box, or any other object that contains things.

Of course, there are some very bad mixes. For example, seeing a modern day soldier shooting his assault rifle at Frodo in a LOTR setting is especially jarring. But there are some very good ones, like Kingdom Hearts that combined Disney's kid-friendly characters with Square Soft's Final Fantasy worlds and characters. It was a hit with the gaming market, earning a profit of millions of dollars and gaining fans of both genres.

An example of genres mixing

Another example of genres mixing

Er, long nose?

A good idea/genre in my opinion, a creative one, is one that successfully changes how people act and think, the way they perceive things by having the right lenses in front of their eyes and this is done simply by taking elements that share a relationship and aligning them up to form an idea that makes people go wow and saying: “Damn, I should have thought of it myself!”.

The contents are not unique per genre. They contain traces of each other, like Sci-fi containing Fantasy elements for example, or Adventure containing action elements. The lenses may differ, but the projection, the final image will contain similarities.

Future of Gaming

It's all about the future, isn't it. Let's go back in time, where games consisted of board games like chess and go. Sports like wrestling and cock-fighting. Video games like Space Invaders and Pong. Now compare to games now, board games like Life and Monopoly, sports like MMA Fight and chess boxing. Video games have improved their diversity to such an extent that mentioning all would take up too much space. Well, let's just say that games have evolved, getting more and more specialised and complicated, where rules and regulations are often brought into play and improved upon, updating and creating new play, like the chess-boxing.

Recently we have Microsoft's Kinect, a controller-free gaming and entertainment experience.

It enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game through a natural user interface using gestures, spoken commands, or presented objects and images. Which kind of saddens me, for this is going to end up with gamers getting lesser and lesser physical interaction with games, even if they can speak with the game, the physical act of touching a controller will soon all be gone.

Huff puff, oh running is tough huff puff wheeze, must-eat-chips-to-stay-alive-

What I am worried about is that they are removing the human element in games. Heck not only games, movies and films too. Look around us, and all you see are interactive media like ads on giant screens, iPhones to sample, music to listen from giant speakers. Like Fahrenheit 451, a book I was reading, it seemed eerily similar, for it was hinting a future like the current one we are, just less extreme. I did a few slides about it, and to think that in the future, games will be literally virtual magic circles, where one will ignore the 'real' outside as they are kept spell-bound by the illusions in future games, trapped in the world as they ignore the reality that is outside.

Creativity Game

I have always wondered what creative thinking was. Wasn’t it a spontaneous thing? Not a process that could be broken down into parts to be fiddled around and played with. Looks like you actually can. According to the web articles I have found and looked through, and actually following them to varying degrees of success, I tentatively say that they are of some use. Let me explain in further detail.

Firstly, we have to introduce ourselves to each other in the research group, a stage I call * HEY MAN LET”S BE FRIENDS*. This is the stage where we all act nice and try to gauge each other. When that’s done, we start by IDENTIFYING the problem, and sitting down together to brainstorm. Holy crap, that’s when the trouble will start. Some people may disagree with other people’s ideas, leading to arguments that if not resolved, end up festering and just destroys the group’s morale.

Well, if that’s all done and dusted, we will all engage in vigorous research, before heading into Incubation, where we all stand back from the problem and look at it in different angles (some call this the slacking period, as we don’t really do anything productive here, I don’t see much honestly, I rather be doing something… productive). More often than not, I see this process not taken seriously, as people will be just slacking off or slinking away for 3 hour toilet breaks. How the hell one thinks of ways to effectively create a character concept while taking a dump is just…

When that’s all done and dusted, the group then enters the Illumination stage, where we finally settle down on an idea and prepare to pitch it/test it. If nothing goes wrong (and most of the time it does) we will go straight towards validation. If not, we would just have to try again and again till we get it right.

Lastly, we will refine the idea, and that’s when that all mighty bolt of tremendous insight hits us in the cranium! We then perfect it, and assign roles and tasks to be done. Success, man!
Moral of story: Do not slack, work hard and smart, ask lots of questions, never say die and just keep on going. Like how my group’s creativity model shows, just go head first and never give up, eventually you will hit that super idea lying dormant somewhere in our minds!