Shaman Popiah

I'm only human

2010-11-21T06:49:00.001-08:00

I cannot help but feel bitter.

Reflection of studio project

2010-11-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

Our studio project was about a clay model forced on a journey to save his master's life.
About our creativity project, I have discussed about it already, in a previous post, but I sahl do so again.

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!

Play as a way to design: Games in Media

2010-09-22T18:20:00.000-07:00

(final post is in March Archives under Links tab due to space constraints)

In today's post, I will be explaining some ideas of what 'play' and 'games' are, as well as some ideas and theories of mine before touching more on games in mainstream media such as films and movies. I feel that this would be very useful to read through as readers would understand more about what a 'game' is and will appreciate the post about the main post better. Let me start by introducing a man and his ideas.

In 1938 Dutch historian Johan Huizinga introduced the idea that man is also a Homo Ludens (a playing man), a man for whom play played a vital part in both culture and society, sometimes regarded as an act of emancipation.

What is Play and Design
Almost like 1d, 2d, 3d, 4d? Mindscrew.

Huizinga (1938, pp. 8-9) identifies 3 characteristics that play must have, which that it was free, in fact the embodiment of freedom itself. Play is not “ordinary” or “real” life and that play is distinct from “ordinary” life both as to locality and duration.

Design is basically experience, skills and knowledge that are applied by Man to change and “mould his environment to suit his material and spiritual needs” (B. Archer, 1973, p. 1).
Huizinga writes that all play “is a significant function—that is to say, there is some sense to it.... All play means something.”(Huizinga 1938, p. 1) and predates and even produces culture:”Culture arises in the form of play... is played from the very beginning... It is through this playing that society expresses its interpretation of life and the world.”(Huizinga 1938, p. 66)

But Roger Caillois defined play as “an occasion for pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money...” (Caillois 2001, pp. 5-6)
Nothing is produced; no progress is made in the act of playing the game itself. Which I disagree vehemently, as play makes use of Man’s mind and body. In play Man exerts and exercises his body and mind, keeping it sharp and fit for the rigours of ‘real life’ where play is real. Playing is often a mimic of real life skills and jobs, a make believe of some sorts that allows Man to have fun while strengthening those skills at the same time.

Chess players stretch their minds trying to outwit each other; it keeps the mind ticking, which maybe why its many forms are so popular with the elderly worldwide who often face dementia because of old age.

Play sharpens skills and encourages players to think of ways to improve on their strategies and iron out potential kinks, which is of immense help to design. As of how the body and mind of Man can be kept in optimum condition through play, so can design through using play to further improve the skills and knowledge applied in designing something.

For example, when engaging in a snowball fight, in the process of playing one would find the optimal force and angle needed to throw and hit the target with a snowball of a certain weight. Likewise this newfound knowledge can be applied to designing a tennis ball launcher that would be able to fire tennis balls with the same levels of power and angle acquired from playing accurately at players to hit, therefore suiting one’s material needs.

Not only are current skills improved during play, but new skills may develop as a result too. One such example would be of the Aborigines of Australia. They were a primitive people prior to European intervention in their way of life, so they used the technology and materials available to them in the bush land. (Clarke 2003, pp. 51-53) During times when they were not hunting or foraging for food, they entertained themselves through play like dancing and making music that eventually turned into their rituals and culture. A very iconic musical instrument of theirs, the Didgeridoo, is a straight hollowed out tree branch which is blown through using the vibrating lips of the player to vary the sound. Through play, they found out that blowing through a termite hollowed branch resulted in a sound that could change according to how strong they blow. This newfound knowledge prompted them to improve on the musical instrument’s design, decorating it with Aborigine patterns and designs. Generation after generation they kept on improving it and it became the Didgeridoo as we know it today, therefore suiting one’s spiritual needs.

Animals and Play
Animals at play way before humans did

Huizinga states that “animals have not waited for man to teach them their play” (Huizinga 1938, p. 1).Despite what seems like childish behaviour, play actually occupies a near primordial role in the foundations of society.
Warblers are known to toss stones onto the ground for no other purpose than for the fun of it. Young animals (dogs) wrestle with each other playfully, and lemmings follow a random leader everywhere to the extent of jumping into bodies of water without a care. (Brown, December 1994, p. 13)

But are animals actually playing in the same way humans do, or if we are just projecting our own experiences on an alien animal kingdom?
What we perceive as play could be entirely different from what animals perceive, but as lion cubs who romp around and stalk each other they undeniably practice hunting skills which will be put to the test as they grow into adults. Such similarities to children playing with each other, playing ‘doctor’ or pretending to be cooks or of other occupations will also lead to such a conclusion above.

But what seems to separate play of Man and Animal is that our play is more specialised and complicated, where rules and regulations are often brought into play and improved upon, updating and creating new play, while animals are limited to their play for millennia.

But let us not forget that for play of Man usually is a contest or representation for something desirable that would fulfil one’s material or spiritual needs. Inevitably, it becomes a contest with rules and regulations or Agon which I will touch more upon in the next segment.
Wild Turkey + Homo Hungrysapiens = Meleagris Roastpavo

For now, I would like to highlight to the reader of the case of the wild turkey (animal). Baby turkeys are also known as poults, and spend their days playing with their siblings and mother, who guards them and play with them, teaching them survival skills. When male poults grow older, they start to compare their tail feathers (plumage) with each other as they play and eventually leave the nest. While their mating season begins in early spring, adult males would start to gobble loudly before sunrise while displaying proudly its royal looking plumage and dance around in a game where the most enticing male would capture the attention of on looking plain female hens and snagging them as mates. (Christman 1999) Play suited the turkey’s material needs by giving him a mate, allowing him to pass on his genes and experience pleasure.

No competition here... Oh wait.

Likewise, while examples like the Apple iPhone and Armani watches serve the same purpose as other phones and watches on the market, sleek and elegant design have made these two products stand out and popular, resulting in more sales.
Like design, the essential feature of it lies in the parading of something out of the ordinary and calculated to arouse admiration.

Competition in Play itself

The myth of playful competition gleefully ignores the undeniable fact of competition: there must be a winner and a loser. As Huizinga notes “the primary thing is the desire to excel others, to be the first and to be honoured for that... The main thing is to have won.” (Huizinga 1938, p. 70)

Huizinga continues that “Any other group (or individual) is always either your friend or your enemy. Enemy, of course, is not to be understood as inimicus or ecthros, i.e., a person you hate, let alone a wicked person, but purely and simply as hostis or polemios, i.e., the stranger or foreigner who is in your way. The theory refuses to regard the enemy even as a rival or adversary. He is merely in your way and is thus to be made away with.” (Huizinga 1938, p. 236)

One thing both writers Huizinga and Caillois do agree on is the play element of agon as the principle motivation behind games. (Caillois 2001, pp.14-15)

Agon means a contest, competition or challenge in ancient Greek. (Huizinga 1938, p. 48) It is the desire to win, whether in a game of chess or on the battlefield of war, to defeat and overcome all obstacles to be the only one standing, the one and only winner.

In the wrong magic circle with the wrong agon

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.

-Magic Circles can be anywhere-
He shoots! He scores!

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.

For example, ancient Greek clothes had flowing, airy robes that spread across parts of Asia where Alexander the Great conquered (Wicklen 1967) and ‘won’ in the magic circle of the battlefield. Such designs influenced the various conquered Asian cultures back then, like parts of India that were invaded whose Buddha statues had long flowing, airy robes which the older, original designs didn’t have. One such example can be found in the Asian Civilisation Museum in Singapore.

Play as a way to design

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.
All in all, design is basically experience, skills and knowledge gained through play which is then applied by Man to change and mould his environment to suit his material and spiritual needs.
Which brings us now to how Man has now incorporated games into modern media such as film and movies. My friend Keenan and I did a presentation on the topic, so I will be uploading the slides too.

Games in Fiction

Bibliography

Johan Huizinga, 1938. Homo Ludens. Beacon Press, pp. 8-9.

Leonard Bruce Archer, 1973. The Need for Design Education. Royal College of Art, p. 1.

Johan Huizinga, 1938. Homo Ludens. Beacon Press, p. 1.

Johan Huizinga, 1938. Homo Ludens. Beacon Press, p. 66.

Caillois Roger, 2001. Man, Play, and Games. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 5-6.

Phillip Clarke, 2003. Where the Ancestors Walked: Australia as an Aboriginal Landscape. Crows Nest, pp. 51-53.

Johan Huizinga, 1938. Homo Ludens. Beacon Press, p. 1.

Brown, Stuart L, 1994. Animals at Play. National Geographic Magazine, Issue 186, December 1994, p. 13.

Carolyn Christman, 1999. Birds of a Feather: Saving Rare Turkeys from Extinction. Amer Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

Johan Huizinga, 1938. Homo Ludens. Beacon Press, p. 70.

Johan Huizinga, 1938. Homo Ludens. Beacon Press, p. 236.

Caillois Roger, 2001. Man, Play, and Games. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 14-15.

Johan Huizinga, 1938. Homo Ludens. Beacon Press, p. 48.

Johan Huizinga, 1938. Homo Ludens. Beacon Press, p. 18.

Ulrich Wicklen, 1967. Alexander the Great. Norton.

The Hero's Journey: Mind of the Hero (not an hero you idiots)

2010-09-21T00:54:00.000-07:00

What defines a hero?

No, no that hero. The Hero, the Archetypical hero ( more on that on the next post).

Do heroes always have to follow a term what Joseph Campbell calls Monomyth, or as it is more often known, the Hero’s Journey?

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book he wrote in 1949, the introduction states:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man

Most games, especially Role-playing games (RPGs) follow this format:

Departure: the Hero leaves the familiar world behind

Initiation: the Hero learns to navigate the unfamiliar world of adventure

Return: the Hero returns to the familiar world

As the writer of my studio team, I have used elements of the hero's journey to construct the game's plot.

Miraculous or unusual circumstances around the Hero's birth

Silico and Alumina are animated clay golems created by the Clay Master, a hermit living in a beautiful forest isolated from the rest of Humanity.

Begins in the ordinary world of the Hero's hometown

Silico and Alumina live together with other golems and their master in a little cottage in the forest.

The Herald brings a Call To Adventure

Alas, old age has caught up with their master, who realises he’s dying.
Silico and Alumina’s Master’s dying wish is to see a statue of himself so that people would remember his legacy of THE Clay Master. Therefore he selected Silico and Alumina, two of his best creations to construct this statue.

The Hero must then decide on how to answer the call, which in my case instead of a refusal of the call, Silico and Alumina jumped at the call since they loved their Master with all their being.

Crossing the First Threshold

The Hero must make a conscious, willing decision to embark on the adventure and leave the known world behind.

However, the Master lost his sculpting tools a long time ago, and the amount of clay needed to construct such a statue was immensely high. Now, Silico and Alumina have to set off to find the various mold casts required to remake the sculpting tools (which they absorb as blueprints) while increasing their clay resources, venturing under the land where they lie buried and forgotten.

On their way down however, the Crow spots them and swoops after them into the nest of the nasty Clay Eater Ants instead of Clay Cave, their original destination.

Road of Trials

The meat of the story, where the hero overcomes obstacles, form allies and confront enemies.

They then met Jimmy the hungry Earthworm, becoming fast friends. They also have to deal with countless ants wanting nothing else but their demise. Worthy adversaries (bosses) like Big Sarge, the Captain of the soldier ants also stand in their way.

The Belly Of The Whale

Represents a symbolic death for the Hero: the Hero is defeated and killed, his flesh scattered, ready to be reborn and emerge as a new person.

As Silico and Alumina venture deeper into the Ants’ nest, Alumina gets kidnapped by the Aphid Assassin Brothers. Devastated at his helplessness to prevent the kidnap, his ally Jimmy the Earthworm manages to get him back on his feet, ‘reborn’ and determined to rescue Alumina, descending deeper into the nest

Night Sea Voyage

The Hero must sneak into the Big Bad's Elaborate Underground Base and retrieve something or someone.

After fighting off the Aphid Assassin Brothers guarding the Royal Chamber, Silico confronts the Queen Ant and tries to let her see reason and release Alumina.

Fight against the Big Bad / Ultimate Boon

Fight against the Big Bad:

The Hero confronts the Big Bad in a typical David Versus Goliath fashion: He is usually called upon to sacrifice himself or something/someone important to him. Note that asked is the key word here—it's usually enough that the Hero be willing to sacrifice something without actually having to do it. Someone else will sacrifice himself in the Hero's stead, or the Hero will prove to have outwitted the Big Bad somehow (through heroic willpower!)

Ultimate Boon:
getting the reward the hero's been chasing all this time

Forced to defeat the Ant Queen to save Alumina, Silico uses all the tools he had gathered so far to fight the Queen with all his might. Not willing to sacrifice either Alumina or the master’s tools, Silico’s will overpowers the Queen’s, defeating her.

The epic battle has weakened the nest’s foundations as it threatens to collapse upon itself.

Refusal of the Return

Are you crazy? The whole place is collapsing and you think the hero is going to stay around and admire the furnishings?

The Return

The Hero now has the boon and high-tails it away, with the villain or his forces in hot pursuit; while they engage in a battle of wits and magic

Jimmy shows up in time to rescue them as he digs with them up towards the surface as they race against time, reaching it safely.

Crossing the Return Threshold

Their joy is short-lived however as the crow that attacked them earlier at the start of the game has now targeted them again. Running away from the crow, they manage to defeat it with the help of Jimmy the Earthworm by shooting it down on its back with clay pellets.

Freedom to Live

Remember what I said about someone else will sacrifice himself in the Hero's stead earlier? I chose to put it here where the player discovers Jimmy’s fate for added impact when they finally realise his heroic sacrifice.

Carrying the broken body of Jimmy who sacrificed his life protecting them, Silico and Alumina reaches the house of their master.
Upon seeing them the Master’s eyes lit up with life again, but quickly filled with remorse and regret as they lay Idot’s body on the cold floor. Standing up for the first time since his illness, the Clay Master makes a decision.
Gathering up the casts and tools, he performs his final masterpiece. As the casts spin around him, they draw power from the Clay Master as he starts molding Jimmy with clay.

Kneeling down on his knees, the Clay Master holds the revived Jimmy (in clay form!) in his hands. The Clay Master smiles gently as he says: “For all of you, my children, are the living legacies of me myself.” As he passes away a falling star streaks across the sky, marking the passing of a great man, the Clay Master. Silico and Alumina cry gently, understanding the message their dear Master left behind, resolving to live out the rest of their lives happily with the other M.A.Gs, carrying on the legacy of the Clay Master.

Conclusion: Other than being a good setup for constructing a protagonist in a game itself, I would also like to say that it doesn't always work for all kinds of heroes. Let me clarify that in detail for my next post: Deconstructing & Reconstructing the Hero Archetype. And a little confession, I wasn't sure how to begin with ths particular post. Do I just regurgitate what I have learned and just write about the heroe's journey and mindnumbingly recite from the book and sources.

I then remembered this and was convinced I am writing the right thing.

yours sincerely,

Reserved

2010-08-23T01:54:00.000-07:00

Alchemy and the Renaissance: Return of the Spirits

2010-08-17T00:19:00.000-07:00

Ahem.
Due to a extremely regretful incident that involved a time machine and several monkeys, Vincent's ID has overwhelmed his EGO and is threatening to stuff 27 pineapples up his a...

Hey,but blogging IS my work! Anyway, today I will be writing on Alchemy and the Renaissance in my HTI Blog. But before that, the reader, yes you, will have to know what in the world the Renaissance was, and how it contributed in shaping the world as we know today.

The Renaissance (French for "rebirth"; Italian: Rinascimento, from ri- "again" and nascere "be born")was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. As a cultural movement, it encompassed a resurgence of learning based on classical sources, the development of linear perspective in painting, and gradual but widespread educational reform.

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence affected literature, philosophy, art, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art.

Now that we all know a bit of its history, let's look at the people who actually made it possible: The Scholars and Philosophers, or as we later call them, Humanists.

They believed that in order to progress themselves, or excel, is to go back to the past, and look hard at themselves. These humanists were grounded in wisdom that hold intelligent arguments and wrote commentaries and also were multi-disciplinary in their approach towards progress. They had access to all sorts of books and ideas, when they then combined, or Synthesis. This is quite important as they believe that they have intelligence from the stars scattered all over the cosmos, and were not shy from using and combining them.

These men and women were excited to read and learn, for they were open-minded, learning up to 4-6 languages such as Greek and Hebrew, in order to read the ideas and theories written in books.

Physical alchemists were mainly greedy people who wanted to find that mystical catalyst that could turn basic elements like lead into gold. These alchemists aren’t very interesting.

Some of them were also spiritual alchemists, people who believed that quintessence, the soul is formed inside the body, and that it affects our imagination and our mind. They read the Picatrix, a grimoire originally written in Arabica, which was a composite work that synthesizes older works on magic and astrology. They also read the De vita libri tres, or the three books of life. De vita is a curious amalgam of philosophy, medicine, "natural magic" and astrology, and is possibly the first book ever written about the health of the intellectual and its peculiar concerns.

These scholars were very interested in the Spiritual and Demonic Magicks discussed in these books, for it also gave them… ideas and theories on freeing their physical selves and to ascend to the ethereal planes, to be one with the celestial. They experimented with herbs, prayer (which was more like chanting, scents and oils, which they called Psychosoma, believing that it brings balance to themselves, to both their physical and spiritual bodies. In modern times we call this aromatherapy.

The Spiritual body takes in vapours/scents, like incense and perfume, and harmonies, like prayer and music. Humanists believed that without habitual fortification of these elements, the spiritual body will become disconcerted and therefore affect the body, causing it to fall sick.

Likewise in the books, alchemists read about moral guidelines on how they should live their lives while exploring science, some kind of ethics they should follow in order to get closer to the celestial.

Since Man existed he has always tried to play God/ be God-like

Beforehand, alchemists only cared about making gold from lead, with greedy materialistic endeavours driving them. Now they seek to become the Perfect Man (godlike) in a Perfect world (celestial) through following guidelines and moral ethics.

Consider these modern ethical issues we face in society now

• Ethical issues raised by producing 'smarter' humans and modifying them

• A foreboding of our current ethical debate on genetics and its manipulation

• Human genome testing with stem cells

Scandalous... for now. With social change comes acceptance of previously rejected notions

They aren’t so different from what the alchemists were going through back then, practicing ‘Magicks’ the Church and the other respective authorities on religions deemed to be the work of the devil. Basically, our thinking has evolved as it ascends (or descends?) into ‘higher matters’, as these ideas are then assimilated into culture and society through the passage of time. Which is why socially, our thinking still hasn’t changed.

All in the name of Science

As I have mentioned and analysed in detail in my Idea of an Idea post, such ‘dangerous’ and ‘wild’ ideas(what we call taboo) are resisted, then broken down into tolerable practices and ideas before being assimilated into culture and society through the passage of time.

I quote from my Idea of an Idea post: “Man is always obsessed with perfection, as his curiosity is what compels him to explore and figure out how things work, and when they succeed, they try to tweak it to the form that is most ideal to him. That is when things start to get dangerous. Man, being a social animal, naturally developed culture and society, and different environments produce different cultures and people.”

Man seeks perfection...

Man seeks to make the ideal place for the ideal Man

No, our thinking hasn’t evolved biologically, but socially, as a society, it has. Even though there will always be critics on ‘dangerous thinking’ and ‘ethical scientific experiments’, they will eventually get assimilated into culture and society or broken down into tolerable ideas. Whether the first or second event happens is entirely up to society, how it thinks.

Linking it to games design, gamers want to be all powerful; to obtain knowledge and power, so they can be god-like, the Perfect Being. They wipe out the opposition in order to get stronger, and impose their own beliefs and ideas on them. Like the physical alchemists before them, the gamer is driven by materialistic endeavours (agon, to be superior to the rest).

But now, modern day gamers are like the Spiritual Alchemists and the Humanists of old. Now they seek to become the Perfect Man (godlike) in a Perfect world (celestial) through following guidelines and moral ethics, but instead in games themselves.

Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, KOTOR, Dragon Age and countless more games… They provide the player with moral choices, bombarding them with it, to choose to be whatever they want to be, all within games where they experience the results, but not the fallout in real life.

Not just in games, films too portray the various shades of morality

Therefore, the evolution of thinking in Alchemy has not changed in its transition to Science, but it is Human Society itself that affects the results.

Alchemy and the Renaissance: Spirits Within

2010-07-23T03:17:00.000-07:00

-reserved til further notice-

Notes have been taken down on lesson, awaiting permission from owner(me) to be transfered over using daemonic magick to blogger.

We apologise for any inconvinience and are regretful.

yours sincerely,
white magick practicioner,
Vincent.

Reflect on the presentations on the genre tropes of Horror and Movie Reviews

2010-06-29T23:34:00.002-07:00

This is a post combining the movie reviews and the reflections on the entire Horror Trope presentations.

Being a die-hard horror fan that gets his kicks from horror films and games, I spent my holidays re-watching all the horror movies I have watched before. I have picked out 3 horror movies I would like to highlight to you all:

The Maid
Shutter
Black Sheep

The Maid is a local horror film where a maid away from the home for the 1st time comes to Singapore to work and ends up in a seemingly normal household, caring for the elderly couple and their mentally challenged son. However as the days pass and the month of the hungry ghosts comes, strange things start to happen, and the maid eventually discovers a horrifying secret the family is hiding from her…

Shutter is a horror film based in Thailand, where a male photographer starts to experience weird paranormal events around him. Ghostly visages start to appear in his developed photos, he starts to see scary figures and nightmares of someone constantly pursuing him. Determined to solve the problem, the photographer and his girlfriend decide to do some research. Eventually the girlfriend suspects her photographer boyfriend of hiding something from her…

Black Sheep is set in New Zealand, where two brothers growing up on a farm are suddenly fatherless due to an unfortunate incident. Years later, the younger brother comes back to the farm to sign his portion of the farm to his elder brother, having left years ago due to the trauma (which also led him to be deathly afraid of sheep). Unknown to him, a couple of environmentalists unwittingly unleashed a flesh eating virus when they released a lamb foetus infected with it, biting one of them. It eventually bit a sheep wandering nearby and it spread to the large amount of sheep in the surrounding farmlands…

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)

In The Maid, the ghost is severely burned, especially on her face (impure). She disturbs the maid, even in her sleep, where the maid tossing and turning in fear finally opens her eyes, sees the horrifying sight of the burnt ghost being hung on the ceiling fan and swirling slowly with it, its eyes staring straight at the maid (threatening).

While in Shutter, the ghost is horribly disfigured, her neck at an awkward angle (impure) and in one of the scariest horror scenes ever, she chases the photographer lead up a flight of stairs, and eventually up an emergency ladder. But as he is halfway up, he glances up and sees her gliding down towards him, bleeding hollow eye sockets and all (threatening).

Finally in Black Sheep, the horrors in question are the flesh devouring sheep, which in my humble opinion, is ****ing screwed up on so many levels. Ahem. Where do I begin, alright the fact that these sheep are normally docile herbivores that grace serenely, when they become infected, they become bloodthirsty(impure), actually leaping in the air to sever human throats, violently crashing through wooden doors in attempts to devour the leads(threatening). And the fact or should I say twist, is that when humans get bitten, they turn into weresheep that prey on humans.

This is quite an interesting turn of events where these two disparate entities, where one being changes into and back from at different times, the werewolf for example which in our eyes, is impure, and that the fact that it is now a weresheep that feeds on human flesh makes it even more impure and threatening in our eyes.

Quoting from Noel Carrol’s philosophy of horror, the horrors must be regarded as both threatening and impure. If only threatening, then the emotion is fear. If only impure, the emotion is disgust. But, if both, the emotion is horror.

On an entirely new yet similar note, I have detected a trend in horror movies.
They tend to cast females as the ghost, or portrayed as antagonists, which can be seen as a reflection of men’s pathological fear of women, their power, and menstruation, resulting in castration and power anxiety.

In a discussion I had with classmate, I explained to her that due to our society where women are systematically suppressed and invisible, when you put them in a position of power (as a ghost tormenting the lead) which is unfamiliar to us we are more frightened as men, where women will also be horrified as they can empathise with the female ghost as the emotion they convey (revenge, cannot letting go) are very much in tune to what they feel on a daily basis. Men especially will find this threatening, and impure due to the very disfigurement they show.

The prevalence of women ghosts in so many horror movies so far can be seen as due to that freakish state brought on by repression, where writers know by tapping into this, they can bring the audience deeper into the ‘world’ they are writing, and better feel the sense of horror.

The female subject is shown in horror movies in different ways through time. Women are beginning to come into their own in the horror genre, showing that they are as strong as men and are not the sexual objects they were once perceived as in classic horror (Dracula anyone? Where helpless ladies are being charmed by the Count and turned into vampires sensually).

In The Maid, the maid not only puts asides her fears of the ghost, and even goes on to solve her cause of death and proper burial of the ghost’s remains, even in the face of danger if being found out by the couple and killed.

Horror is a genre that rarely features women in a non-exploitative way whether in games or in other media, and will continue to be. In implementing this, putting females in our future games as antagonists and even ghosts, we can better thrill the gamer, and hopefully letting they know why.

Before we end, I would like to highlight one last point: the key difference of horror in games and other media such as films and movies. Movie audiences are a passive audience, where the story doesn't change no matter what they do, the movie doesn't care if you scream, yell or shake your trembling fist at the screen; the movie trudges on, oblivious as the result remains the same, not being influenced by any factor. This is a loophole of sorts, as movie audiences can easily escape the illusion of horror by simply closing their eyes and cupping their ears. Like the passage of time and the crashing of waves on the beach, the movie ends on its own terms whether the audience wants it or not.

Games, on the other hand, are quite different. Gamers are a direct influence on this kind of media as they are able to interact with the game itself. Whatever gamers do, the avatar they control in the game attempt to emulate to the best of their abilty (or the game engine, mostly), directly affecting how the game plays itself out. I find that it is often scarier to play a horror game as I immersed myself entirely in the illusion, the magic circle. By allowing me to directly affect the game itself, the player is further drawn into the magic circle (I will cover more about this in my post of games in movies and other media =]), whatever scares and horrific creatures will horrify me much effectively than just sitting in front of a screen knowing there's nothing I can do to change the ending, other than just reaching casually over my sofa, grabbing the remote and switching the channel.

But that won't work in a game. As the monster jerks slowly towards you, its arms flailing straight at you, you grip your controller tightly, seeing yourself in the game, being forced to make a decision that has kept we as a species alive for hundreds of generation, to flourish as others died, a hyperarousal that makes you feel as alive as ever.

Fight or flight.

Creative Thinking, ORLY?

2010-05-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

YA RLY.

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…
Sorry, just taking a breather. Oh wait.

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!

Deep Doodle of HTI 2 as a game

Reflection 1: Regrets and Hope

2010-05-27T12:19:00.000-07:00

As I stand in the classroom now, I look back at my brief life so far finding both regrets and bright memories in equal measure. I do not wish to just talk about what I like to do (play soccer, urban exploration, cooking) and what I dislike (tomatoes, people who repeatedly break promises). I wish to reveal something I have not revealed even to my poly friends so far.

Coming from the express stream in secondary school with an “O” Level score of 17 during 2007, I managed to enroll in the nearby Yishun Junior College in 2008.
At first it was good, I had lots of friends, I partied hard, even managed to date a couple of girls. But as the workload started coming in I was swamped. The modules I took were far too much for me, yet I continued in my vices, not wanting to throw down my pride and admit that things were taking a toll on me. I eventually skipped my midyear exams.
My tutor called my family the next day. It was a big hoo-ha. I will never forget how broken hearted my parents looked, how disappointed to see their son fall into such disgrace. I soon fell into depression, and only went to school just for the attendance. Based on my results, even if I scored 100% for the rest of the year, I wouldn’t have been promoted.

Happier times in JC

The next few weeks were pure agony for me. What I had has long gone, my social status, my trust, and the things a teenager with raging hormones found most important. I am very thankful for a small circle of friends that actually cared and pulled me out of the abyss, and m family for being patient with me. I started to get my life back on track. Deciding not to be a burden on my family, I had a long overdue heart to heart talk with them. I did a lot of thinking and research, a lot of asking around. I will quit being a student in Yishun JC, and find a job. When the next year comes, I would join Singapore Polytechnic in a design course, Games Design, a course which I feel should be the best road for me to take.
And so I did. Those months were tiring, having to work instead of studying was very different than I had thought, and I believed those months made me wiser to the outside world, a little bit more mature. At long last, when the letter came, telling me I was accepted into the course, I nearly cried.

1 hour before we performed for school and country on NDP

What followed was another story to be told another day. But there were good times during those periods. During my JC days, I was part of the school choir, and was part of a concert. I donated blood during blood drives. I took part in the NDP 0’8 as a cheerleader, dancing and cheering on the nation in the stadium, carrying the girls on my shoulders as I smiled and felt like I was on the top of the world. While it was certainly different from serving the nation as part of the NCC brigade back in NDP 0’6, the fact that I was doing something for my country will never leave my heart.
Now, as the leader of a small production team, I hope that we can give our best in creating a game that our target audience can enjoy playing, for I have found my calling: Making people happy by enjoying games.

Now, as a member of Capoeira!

Deep Doodle of What I have learned so far in HTI

Hero's Journey

2010-05-23T11:02:00.001-07:00

Deep Doodle of my hero's journey

To be honest, I always felt my journey was like a RTS game, where i control various aspects of my mind and do battle with the armies of procrastination and wanton confusion.

Faith

2010-05-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

Using faith as a support of life is actually not believing in yourself. A faith might make your life easier, because you might think there will be a higher power that will help you to do things. But actually the things that you can do are not written yet and nobody else can do them except you. You can pray to God to help you, but in the end it is still up to you to do it.

No offense to anyone out there.

Peace out,
Vincent

Cooking up a HTI Storm

2010-05-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

Something seemingly unrelated to games, but are more similar than you think.

I have been trying out my hand at cooking, since i may have to leave my home to strike out a living in the not-so-distant future. Anyway, here's a recipe that i cooked up myself, and in no way taken or plagarised from any sources. I posted it on other websites which i deem too sensitive to reveal here, so if you do see it, it's mine.

Ever went on a picnic and found that carrying a pot of curry a hassle?
Well, why not switch to dry curry instead?
Non-spill, and less space occupied = lighter load!

I used to organise BBQs for my classes, and usually cook a simple dry curry to round up the course. It's a very simple dish to cook, and takes around 25 minutes to prepare the ingredients, and 35 minutes to cook it(give or take).

I have tweaked the recipe a little to serve 4-5 people, i mean come on, you don't usually cook for more than that right?

Utensils Needed
Wok** (if not, a really large pan, large enough for a whole chicken)
Small cooking pot (for blanching)
Flat ladle (for stir-frying)
Chopping Board
Vegetable Knife

Ingredients
1 whole chicken (tell your butcher/supermarket helper to chop/clean it up for you, it's easier than doing it yourself)
3 large potatoes
1 stalk of carrot
1 stalk of lemongrass
100ml of water (half a cup)
100-150ml of coconut milk (use full cream milk for those who cannot take too much cholesterol, also around half a cup)

Condiments
1 whole onion (shallots will do fine too)
3-4 cloves of garlic (i usually use 5-6, but your call, i love garlic)
2-3 tablespoons of oil (any will do, i usually use vegetable oil)

Seasonings
250 grams of Curry powder (curry paste is fine too, get meat flavour)
Curry Leaves (around 2 pinches)
Salt (pinch)

Preparing of ingredients
1. Skin your carrot, and cube it.
2. Peel your potatoes, and cube them.
*Try to first cut the potato into planks for easier cubing*
3. Chop your garlic finely and set them aside.
*Smash the garlic with the flat of your knife for easier removal of 'skin'*
4. Wash, then smash the bulb of the lemongrass. Break the lemongrass as if you are breaking a stick, but leave the ends hanging together.
5. Remove the 'skin', and chop onion(s) finely.
6. If haven't done so, chop chicken into bite-sized portions.
7. Bring a small pot of water to a boil.
8. Blanch the chicken pieces for around 2-3 seconds each, and remove from hot water. Drain off excess water from chicken.
*This is to remove the icky stuff from the raw chicken, like dirt and such*

Cooking
1. Heat wok with oil over high heat.
2. Add onions, garlic, curry leaves and stir fry until fragrant.
*or until golden brown, try not to burn them!*
3. Reduce to medium heat.
4. Add curry powder/paste, and stir-fry for 1 minute.
*WARNING PUNGENT SMELL THAT WILL MAKE YOU TEAR/CHOKE IF YOU'RE TOO CLOSE WARNING*
5. Throw in your pieces of chicken and stir-fry for 3 minutes.
6. Place lemongrass into the wok and add your water.
*Try to add your water around the wok, to ensure equal distribution*
7. Put in your potatoes and carrots.
8. Sprinkle salt and stir-fry for 2 more minutes.
9. Leave the curry to bubble for 18-20 minutes. Keep an eye on it.
*Leave the wok uncovered, you want the water to evaporate*
10. Add coconut milk, and stir fry for last 3 minutes.
11. Turn the heat off, and serve hot, with rice preferably Very Happy
*For those moving it, make sure to get a large enough pot to carry it around with*

Idea of an Idea

2010-04-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

No Idea was ever original

I have always thought of ideas as the sparks of inspiration that hit home when you least expect it. But before I go further, I would also like to declare one of the few things I actually believe in: No idea was ever original.
First, I would define ideas as a combination of numerous lenses (elements) and the object of the idea in question. For example, an idea of making a flying (element) pen (object). When one is looking at the object with a particular lens and likes it, an idea is formed. By adding more lenses into the picture, the image shown to the viewer changes and if it is not what he wanted, he can just change the lenses until he is satisfied with what he wants. Now all he needs is to make other people like the same idea.

Ideas are how our mind sees. Not though sight, but thoughts.

Like I have said before, I personally believe that no idea was ever original. 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.

Which brings me to my point, that no idea is ever original, and the current 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.
A good idea 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!”.

OM NOM NOM NOM

Elements that share a relationship are like cookies and milk, elements that share a connection that people see and comprehend right away. How does one make highlight the softness of silk? How does one ramp up the sex factor of a model? You can place a baby along the silk, her soft baby skin complimenting the silk’s softness. You can bare her midriff, where most men look at the most, and add shadows and soft lighting to produce a seductive atmosphere. How you let those elements work with one another is important on how the idea affects people. (You wouldn’t want to throw the model into a pit full of cobras, or hang her by the feet below a helicopter 300 feet in the air; it would be like adding a blackened lens to the mix, as people cannot see a relationship between those elements.

Dangerous Ideas

Innocent victims of a napalm attack during the Vietnam War

Haunting image of a woman living in war torn Afghanistan (National Geographic)

Man is always obsessed with perfection, as his curiosity is what compels him to explore and figure out how things work, and when they succeed, they try to tweak it to the form that is most ideal to him. That is when things start to get dangerous. Man, being a social animal, naturally developed culture and society, and different environments produce different cultures and people.
But what we forget too often is that Man is also a violent being. Since our caveman days we have always resolved conflicts through violence, since it was the easiest and most effective form of problem solving, it stuck. Even now with all our grand ideas of morals and laws, violence sticks out like a sore thumb that spits in the hypocritical face of society. You see, differences among people make them suspicious of one another, and even hostile as humans treat others who are not similar very differently. A tragic, but very real example that should all serve us as a grim reminder that ideas/ideals can be, and are dangerous was the Nazi camps of World War 2.

The Nazis thought of their German race as the ultimate human race, and deemed the Jewish race as a parasitic race full of ideals that were not needed. During the war, they captured them and tortured, maimed and murdered them by the thousands inside numerous ‘death camps’. This horrific event emphasizes on Man’s violent reactions to others who do not share the same ideas, others who are deemed weak and parasitic according to their ideas. This is only one of the many cases where dangerous ideas didn’t just remain as ideas, but put forth in action, when many people gathered under a single banner and looked through the same lenses and found out that the idea was perfect and good.

Ultimately, in order to generate good ideas, you need an immense amount of elements that do not exhaust themselves, so you have to read, see and hear all kinds of media, and record them inside your brain, your vault of knowledge. File them away, organize them according to where you think they belong and take them out when deciding on a new idea. For me, the time where I think the most uninterrupted and of the better ideas is when I am on my bed at night, with no lenses in front of me but the night view through the window. It is then I can allow my thoughts to flow smoothly, letting them drift me off to sleep and into my dreams where they continue to work, piecing themselves together until the next set of lenses are ready.

What I have learned about HTI so far.

References
http://www.radicalacademy.com/adlerideas.htm
http://www.leg.state.or.us/process.html
http://advertising.suite101.com/article.cfm/what_is_an_idea
http://knowledge.smu.edu.sg/article.cfm?articleid=1267
Blue Light ISBN 0-316-57098-2

Mother of all cheese cakes

2010-04-27T01:53:00.000-07:00

I swear by the Mother of all cheese cakes, this is my HTI2 blog.

Theory of Genre (Top Five Lessons)

2010-03-01T06:21:00.000-08:00

What have I learned so far from this?

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!