Sally McKay's top ten online things to do that don't involve reading (+friends&family links)
1. Most of the items below on this list are podcasts. Listening to lectures online goes down real good with puzzle flash eye/finger game candy: Bunch is truly mindless and looks like smarties; Desktop Tower Defense is actually kind of a good game; Bear and Cat Marine Balls is very very cute.
 .
I highly recommend loading up one of these brain cell destroying little gem-of-a-games if you are planning to tuck into any heavy duty online listening. Everyone knows the human brain takes in audio information much better when the eyes are distracted by blinking blobs of saturated colour and the small motor control neural centres are busy pushing switches...right?
2. CBC Idea's "How to Think about Science" series
One of the things that has occasionally bugged me about some of the various art & science hybrid events I've participated in is the way that artists can sometimes get all on their high horse about how they (we) can be critical of science as if scientists weren't subject to ethical reviews up the ya-ya, and aren't held socially accountable to their own work through professional rigamaroles that would send most of us artists running back to the garret. I'm not saying that the ethics of science are by any means transparent, but the most thoughtful and thought provoking critiques of scientific ideology tend to emerge from the scientific community itself.
In this series every person interviewed is deeply invested in science while at the same time challenging fundamental assumptions about their own discipline. I enjoyed each episode, but I think my favourite was quantum physicist Arthur Zajonc, who has a great take on the ubiquitous practice of modeling (modeling abstracted principles of nature as opposed to experiential observation of nature) as a kind of narcissistic human self-idolotry.
3. The Brain Science Podcast with Dr. Ginger Campbell
Dr. Ginger Campbell is my hero. Her generous, open-minded journalism is fueled by the kind of nerdish enthusiasm for her subject that reminds me how happy I am to live in the online age of niche disseminations. Campbell knows a lot about brain science, and she does much more prep work for her interviews than most journalists, reading carefully the books that her subjects have written, drawing connections between issues that arise in different episodes and always putting her listeners first. She is charming and disarming and creates such an atmosphere of comraderie that the really tough questions just roll off her tongue and her interviewees are happy to take them up. Pick and choose the topics that interest you. Three of my favourite episodes are:
#39 Brain Science Podcast: Michael Arbib on Mirrror Neurons
#36 Brain Science Podcast: Embodied Intelligence with Art Glenberg
#22 Brain Science Podcast: Christof Koch discusses Consciousness
4. Emergent Podcast: 2007 Theological, Philosophical Conversation- Session 1 part 1 and part 2, Session 2 and Session 3 with Richard Kearney and Jack Caputo
If you really want to get a grip on postmodernism, ask a Christian philosopher theologian! Caputo and Kearney are both serious intellectual philosopher dudes who got invited by a group of hard thinking, questioning young American Christians to discuss their work in a two-day symposium about the social benefits of ambiguity and doubt. There are really funny personal anecdotes about Lacan and Derrida thrown in for comic relief. If you (like me) have been harbouring a spidey-sense that Jacques Lacan was maybe a great big dick-head, this is the podcast for you.
5. Philosophy 185 Heidegger with Instructor Hubert Dreyfus
Many thanks to Be Smiley for turning me onto Hubert Dreyfus. He is like a professor from a movie about a professor. He dodders and fusses and gets his podcast microphone messed up. But he's right on top of the ideas and the best thing is that he rethinks his own philosophical positions as he goes along, so you can hear this big mind working and grinding and falling into pits of self-doubt and climbing out again while he talks. Also, at some point he goes on a hilarious tangent about how he took on the artificial intelligence dudes while he was at MIT, claiming — based solely on his reading of Heidegger — that they would never succeed, and he wins!
Trying to read Heidegger is kind of like trying to dig your way up out of a six-foot deep earthen grave, but this isn't reading, it's listening (don't forget the pretty colours puzzle games) and Dreyfus makes it fun. (Bonus: Dreyfus also taught a podcast course on Man, God, and Society in Western Literature which is just as good and you don't have to deal with Heidegger)
6. This American Life
USA voted Barack Obama for president because the country is not entirely composed of crazed and inbred republicans. In fact, if the only thing you ever heard from contemporary USA was This American Life, you'd think the country was overrun with humane and thoughtful Jewish intellectuals with a self-deprecating sense of humour and a gift for narrative that draws from the best depth and breadth of American literary tradition from William Faulkner to Hunter S. Thompson (passing through the East Village). It's feelgood bed time stories for lefty Western adults and ranks second only to Coronation Street on my list of entertainment vices. Two of my favourite episodes are:
Hamlet in prison
Music Lessons
7. The Moth
The Moth has rules: New Yorkers get onstage and tell a true story that happened to them without notes. Each one takes about 20 minutes. Some people are famous, most are not. All the stories are good because this is New York where there are lots and lots and lots of competitive people and the ones who manage to claw their way into a public forum of any kind usually have something going for them.
8. Practice of Art 23AC - Foundations of American Cyber-Culture with Instructor Joseph Donald McKay
Did someone say nepotism? Full disclosure: Instructor Joseph Donald McKay is a family member. Ever get frustrated because you wish you knew what your sibling knows? I did, and then I listened to these podcasts. Now I know what Joester knows, plus I know what I know ...bwa-ha-ha-ha! This course provides solid foundational info if you are into net art; lots of juicy history about Turing and Charles Babbage and Donna Haraway and the Whole Earth Catalogue plus good contemporary digital artist links and pertinent political reminders about the digital divide.
9. SART:3480 - Dynamic Web Content with Instructor Lorna Mills
Okay, technically there is reading on this site. But mostly I just look at all the pretty flashing scrolling spinning shiny thingies. Lorna is my dear friend and the defacto boss of this blog. She's an excellent teacher and almost makes me want to relive my undergrad so I could take her course. But not really, because I'd rather enjoy other people's messed up youtube hacks than do any coding myself. Lorna's class and Joester's class did a cross-border blog collaboration but I've lost the link. Little help?
10. OVVLvverk
I live with Von Bark, the brain behind the owls. I look at OVVLvverk every week because it always surprises me. This website began as a sort of spoof of the infamous VVork but has swollen way past any kind of gag into an online image collection that makes excellent use of self-imposed restrictions, bending and stretching categories like a good collection should. Each day's post is the best one yet.
"If you (like me) have been harbouring a spidey-sense that Jacques Lacan was maybe a great big dick-head, this is the podcast for you."
Yessssssss!
The Hamlet in Prison episode of This American Life is one of my all-time faves. I listen to it while I do the dishes (the series, not just that one episode on repeat. That would be really depressing)
Jeez. I wake up this morning to find myself outed in not one but two posts!
"actually kind of a good game" Ha! You logged plenty of hours on DTD and are playing it down because the only family member you can beat at it never uses a computer.
The Royal Society of Intertubes - a cross class (and nations) site I was seriously stretching a point by calling a surf club. There's been no tending to this space lately and it's a monster to load, so be patient.
http://23ac.appspot.com/
And here's our class homepage that Graduate Assistant Laura (http://lauragreig.com/) is HUGELY responsible for the awesomeness of http://studio.berkeley.edu/art23/fa08/
Next, it's on to Game Design! (no podcast, sorry).
Bear and Cat Marine Balls is a work of an evil genesis game designer, which in Japan mean average guy on the street.
I wish the "next ball" indicator was more in the line of vision, and I'm having trouble understanding what triggers a "power", but dude, it's pretty fun.
What do you mean no podcast???? Don't you realize I need to have the podcasts playing so that can repeat everything you say out loud to my students? (Though its sometimes easier to play the whole thing through the speakers and just lip sync.)
I've got a brilliant idea for a game about a bear and a cat.
go on.
Well the bear is shooting down these balls that are trying to get him.
That doesn't make much sense...
Wait here me out, he's in a submarine.
Oh, okay, that's more like it. Where's the cat?
what cat?
That just sounded like every client I've ever had.
Sorry LM, you're gonna have to come up with some original content on your own. I'm sure you'll manage.
I'll be sure to send you links to the best student games.
I'll never come up with anything on my own, too much work.
I'd love to teach a game programming class in Flash. What will your students be developing with?
I think the cat shows up after that really hard level that I can never beat.
I just spent an hour and a half on that game. Damn you to hell.
no flash. Processing.
First project - remake pong, then fu&k with it.
second project - make a game in the cloud.
final project - make a kickassed game using your skills.
skillz
http://www.mixmatters.com/hot/2008/images/Play_N_Skillz-One_Mo_Gin.jpg
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Sally McKay's top ten online things to do that don't involve reading (+friends&family links)
1. Most of the items below on this list are podcasts. Listening to lectures online goes down real good with puzzle flash eye/finger game candy: Bunch is truly mindless and looks like smarties; Desktop Tower Defense is actually kind of a good game; Bear and Cat Marine Balls is very very cute.
I highly recommend loading up one of these brain cell destroying little gem-of-a-games if you are planning to tuck into any heavy duty online listening. Everyone knows the human brain takes in audio information much better when the eyes are distracted by blinking blobs of saturated colour and the small motor control neural centres are busy pushing switches...right?
2. CBC Idea's "How to Think about Science" series
One of the things that has occasionally bugged me about some of the various art & science hybrid events I've participated in is the way that artists can sometimes get all on their high horse about how they (we) can be critical of science as if scientists weren't subject to ethical reviews up the ya-ya, and aren't held socially accountable to their own work through professional rigamaroles that would send most of us artists running back to the garret. I'm not saying that the ethics of science are by any means transparent, but the most thoughtful and thought provoking critiques of scientific ideology tend to emerge from the scientific community itself.
In this series every person interviewed is deeply invested in science while at the same time challenging fundamental assumptions about their own discipline. I enjoyed each episode, but I think my favourite was quantum physicist Arthur Zajonc, who has a great take on the ubiquitous practice of modeling (modeling abstracted principles of nature as opposed to experiential observation of nature) as a kind of narcissistic human self-idolotry.
3. The Brain Science Podcast with Dr. Ginger Campbell
Dr. Ginger Campbell is my hero. Her generous, open-minded journalism is fueled by the kind of nerdish enthusiasm for her subject that reminds me how happy I am to live in the online age of niche disseminations. Campbell knows a lot about brain science, and she does much more prep work for her interviews than most journalists, reading carefully the books that her subjects have written, drawing connections between issues that arise in different episodes and always putting her listeners first. She is charming and disarming and creates such an atmosphere of comraderie that the really tough questions just roll off her tongue and her interviewees are happy to take them up. Pick and choose the topics that interest you. Three of my favourite episodes are:
4. Emergent Podcast: 2007 Theological, Philosophical Conversation- Session 1 part 1 and part 2, Session 2 and Session 3 with Richard Kearney and Jack Caputo
If you really want to get a grip on postmodernism, ask a Christian philosopher theologian! Caputo and Kearney are both serious intellectual philosopher dudes who got invited by a group of hard thinking, questioning young American Christians to discuss their work in a two-day symposium about the social benefits of ambiguity and doubt. There are really funny personal anecdotes about Lacan and Derrida thrown in for comic relief. If you (like me) have been harbouring a spidey-sense that Jacques Lacan was maybe a great big dick-head, this is the podcast for you.
5. Philosophy 185 Heidegger with Instructor Hubert Dreyfus
Many thanks to Be Smiley for turning me onto Hubert Dreyfus. He is like a professor from a movie about a professor. He dodders and fusses and gets his podcast microphone messed up. But he's right on top of the ideas and the best thing is that he rethinks his own philosophical positions as he goes along, so you can hear this big mind working and grinding and falling into pits of self-doubt and climbing out again while he talks. Also, at some point he goes on a hilarious tangent about how he took on the artificial intelligence dudes while he was at MIT, claiming — based solely on his reading of Heidegger — that they would never succeed, and he wins!
Trying to read Heidegger is kind of like trying to dig your way up out of a six-foot deep earthen grave, but this isn't reading, it's listening (don't forget the pretty colours puzzle games) and Dreyfus makes it fun. (Bonus: Dreyfus also taught a podcast course on Man, God, and Society in Western Literature which is just as good and you don't have to deal with Heidegger)
6. This American Life
USA voted Barack Obama for president because the country is not entirely composed of crazed and inbred republicans. In fact, if the only thing you ever heard from contemporary USA was This American Life, you'd think the country was overrun with humane and thoughtful Jewish intellectuals with a self-deprecating sense of humour and a gift for narrative that draws from the best depth and breadth of American literary tradition from William Faulkner to Hunter S. Thompson (passing through the East Village). It's feelgood bed time stories for lefty Western adults and ranks second only to Coronation Street on my list of entertainment vices. Two of my favourite episodes are:
7. The Moth
The Moth has rules: New Yorkers get onstage and tell a true story that happened to them without notes. Each one takes about 20 minutes. Some people are famous, most are not. All the stories are good because this is New York where there are lots and lots and lots of competitive people and the ones who manage to claw their way into a public forum of any kind usually have something going for them.
8. Practice of Art 23AC - Foundations of American Cyber-Culture with Instructor Joseph Donald McKay
Did someone say nepotism? Full disclosure: Instructor Joseph Donald McKay is a family member. Ever get frustrated because you wish you knew what your sibling knows? I did, and then I listened to these podcasts. Now I know what Joester knows, plus I know what I know ...bwa-ha-ha-ha! This course provides solid foundational info if you are into net art; lots of juicy history about Turing and Charles Babbage and Donna Haraway and the Whole Earth Catalogue plus good contemporary digital artist links and pertinent political reminders about the digital divide.
9. SART:3480 - Dynamic Web Content with Instructor Lorna Mills
Okay, technically there is reading on this site. But mostly I just look at all the pretty flashing scrolling spinning shiny thingies. Lorna is my dear friend and the defacto boss of this blog. She's an excellent teacher and almost makes me want to relive my undergrad so I could take her course. But not really, because I'd rather enjoy other people's messed up youtube hacks than do any coding myself. Lorna's class and Joester's class did a cross-border blog collaboration but I've lost the link. Little help?
10. OVVLvverk
I live with Von Bark, the brain behind the owls. I look at OVVLvverk every week because it always surprises me. This website began as a sort of spoof of the infamous VVork but has swollen way past any kind of gag into an online image collection that makes excellent use of self-imposed restrictions, bending and stretching categories like a good collection should. Each day's post is the best one yet.
- sally mckay 12-31-2008 3:16 pm
"If you (like me) have been harbouring a spidey-sense that Jacques Lacan was maybe a great big dick-head, this is the podcast for you."
Yessssssss!
- Leah Sandals (guest) 12-31-2008 5:55 pm
The Hamlet in Prison episode of This American Life is one of my all-time faves. I listen to it while I do the dishes (the series, not just that one episode on repeat. That would be really depressing)
- Gabby (guest) 12-31-2008 11:02 pm
Jeez. I wake up this morning to find myself outed in not one but two posts!
"actually kind of a good game" Ha! You logged plenty of hours on DTD and are playing it down because the only family member you can beat at it never uses a computer.
The Royal Society of Intertubes - a cross class (and nations) site I was seriously stretching a point by calling a surf club. There's been no tending to this space lately and it's a monster to load, so be patient.
http://23ac.appspot.com/
And here's our class homepage that Graduate Assistant Laura (http://lauragreig.com/) is HUGELY responsible for the awesomeness of http://studio.berkeley.edu/art23/fa08/
Next, it's on to Game Design! (no podcast, sorry).
- joester (guest) 1-01-2009 7:03 pm
Bear and Cat Marine Balls is a work of an evil genesis game designer, which in Japan mean average guy on the street.
I wish the "next ball" indicator was more in the line of vision, and I'm having trouble understanding what triggers a "power", but dude, it's pretty fun.
- joester (guest) 1-01-2009 7:33 pm
What do you mean no podcast???? Don't you realize I need to have the podcasts playing so that can repeat everything you say out loud to my students? (Though its sometimes easier to play the whole thing through the speakers and just lip sync.)
- L.M. 1-01-2009 9:11 pm
I've got a brilliant idea for a game about a bear and a cat.
go on.
Well the bear is shooting down these balls that are trying to get him.
That doesn't make much sense...
Wait here me out, he's in a submarine.
Oh, okay, that's more like it. Where's the cat?
what cat?
- joester (guest) 1-01-2009 11:11 pm
That just sounded like every client I've ever had.
- L.M. 1-01-2009 11:14 pm
Sorry LM, you're gonna have to come up with some original content on your own. I'm sure you'll manage.
I'll be sure to send you links to the best student games.
- joester (guest) 1-01-2009 11:17 pm
I'll never come up with anything on my own, too much work.
I'd love to teach a game programming class in Flash. What will your students be developing with?
- L.M. 1-01-2009 11:40 pm
I think the cat shows up after that really hard level that I can never beat.
- sally mckay 1-02-2009 2:57 am
I just spent an hour and a half on that game. Damn you to hell.
- L.M. 1-02-2009 4:01 am
no flash. Processing.
First project - remake pong, then fu&k with it.
second project - make a game in the cloud.
final project - make a kickassed game using your skills.
- joester (guest) 1-02-2009 6:27 pm
skillz
- sally mckay 1-02-2009 9:33 pm
http://www.mixmatters.com/hot/2008/images/Play_N_Skillz-One_Mo_Gin.jpg
- joester (guest) 1-02-2009 9:42 pm