avad | And at night I dream of Legos

Sorry I haven't been around-My computer caught a nasty virus and was not playing nice at all last few days.:( Hopefully it's all fixed now. Poor B stayed up all night dealing with it..and had to go to work this morning.:( Said to me this morn: you've got a computer again. :):)

I've been working on art...arranging my little Lego houses and shrubbery...thinking of healthy cells and suburbia, connection/disconnection....privacy and community. On a burst of motivation (rare), I cleaned up my studio pretty well and organized a ton of stuff into these rolling drawer carts a friend gave me. a gazillion nailpolishes and paints arranged by color scheme...flocking/shrubbery, markers, glitter, etc. All in little accessible drawers. wow. Proud of meself. Set the large piece up on sawhorses so I can work on it tablestyle. Got my smaller pieces all lined up on a table. Ok. It's time to go full-force. Searching for and ordering the little lego pieces I need from Ebay and Bricklink. Got some in the mail today- yay. juno gave me a link to these artists who have a studio next to her and also use Legos in their art. I LOVE their stuff!! And the site itself- too Brilliant and funny!

Great surprise in the mail from mom and dad: they actually found the model blueprint from the house I grew up in!!! I had asked about it awhile ago, saying how I would love to see it because I'm working with memory maps and houses and suburbia in my art and of course that house is the most loaded for me personally. I'm going to do a piece that is a cul-de-sac of houses I've lived in....as a sort of memory file labyrinth. so YAY...this makes it much easier with dimensions and such. hmmm, maybe I should inquire about the other houses....maybe those landlords would be amused by the inquiry. hmmmmm

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I'm intrigued by many aspects....what are the preferred ratios of communication/community and privace, where are our boundaries, how much privacy do we want. Looking at myself as an example...With the internet, I seek out like-minded people, regardless of location, based on common interests. YetI do not seek out my actual neighbors. In fact, I feel I would like to be more sheltered from them, more insulated...higher hedges, more distance. If I visualized it in the absurd ideal...My house would be encircled by nature for a certain distance, hedged off, yet close enough to town and the bay for walking convenience. I would be connected to the people and groups I have 'chosen' through e-media....wallscreens linking friends spaces when turned on...my kitchen to your room, say, for an occassional chat.;)
I look at our various living structures...here in 'real space'....and the choices people make. The secluded mansions...the highrise apartment buildings, condos, suburban streets, etc. I like to look at urban planning diagrams and think about it all in terms of cells and larger organisms. What would be 'healthiest'? Does disconnection from local cells breed apathy? Or does it also allow for longer threads to feed nonlocal areas that need assistance...
What passes through the cell walls, what passes through the hedges in that idealized home cell? packages...people
What is it that propels us to reach outward from our cell? What would be the idealized neighborhood in cyberspace? What would it be there for?
I could go on and on...just a lot of questions I like to think about. How bout you.?thoughts?

Thoughts, many, stemming from your discourse.
In reverse, perhaps, or some strange order of operation:
I know people who've really gotten into their "Small town" dynamics, and become a hardcore part of their community. They rarely look elsewhere, often opting for the sense of self that comes from a tightly-knit community. In opposition, a lot of the 'shy' or 'unpopular' people I know have a lot of good friends online or in many locations, and their sense of identity is more spread out. I think this is just the nature of identity itself - if you tend to identify too much with non-diverse peoples, you will find that others do not interest you. Whereas if you hang out with a bunch of crazily different people, you'll find that boring people are, well, boring.

I really dig the idea of opening my walls to yours. It'd be even better, perhaps, if I could walk through and grab food from your kitchen, then walk back and hop on my computer. That'd be excellent! I think the amount of control we have is a big part of the connections we have - think of it like 'doorways'. Walls are good, so are open spaces, but really the ideal is either a window with shades, or a door, so you can -control- how engulfed you are by other people. Nobody wants to be exposed all of the time, which is why we value our privacy at home. I think.

Like you said, it's kind of about how much privacy we want - but that amount changes regularly, you know? Perhaps we need to engineer P10 with these concepts in mind - so you can have a personal space of your own that is locked away from other people, but can be opened and closed at will, and also public spaces where you can go to appreciate full exposure?

Definitely. Privacy levels change regularly and should be adjustable. Sometimes I might not mind a webcam or such of me working in my studio. Sometimes i would. Lj has many aspects that could be incorporated for adjustments...like the friends-only filtering and private entry options.

I actually find the browsing, listening-in aspect of lj to be quite comforting, it's an odd sort of companionship, being able to 'check in', reassure that friends are well, listen to their thoughts, days, without always needing to actively interact or bring attention to myself. Leave notes and smiles. And yes, engage in dialogue from time to time.
Were you able to check out activeworlds (http://activeworlds.com/) yet? I wonder what the privacy options are there.

Oh, and make sure to close the top of the cereal box when you put it back, eh? Gets stale.;)

My cereal is connected quite well!

Wow, I'm so tired right now. I've been up all night, working out in NYC. *sleeps on the way home, driving thru the city...*

please don't sleep while driving. Things tend to look mushy and passable when they're not.

STILL AWAKE! Oooh, there's some nice mist in front of me... where'd all the traffic go? Oh well... ;)

I often try to envision what it would look like if you could see through all the walls of every house and apartment in a neighborhood at the same time. I think of it as a grand scheme, and not so much as each individual specifically. I try to picture the movement of all the people ebbing and flowing as a chorus in the community exposed. With so many people behind closed doors, it’s easy not to realize how much is going on around us all the time.

wouldn't that be wonderful??!:)
Have you seen the game The Sims? The cutoff roofs give that perspective....and that's just what I try to imagine sometimes in my neighborhood...and in my art.sims houses (http://sasarin.jp/sims/houses.html)

Yeah, I've played The Sims. It's neat how you get a feeling of birds eye view and fly on the wall at the same time. Very cool.

And at night I dream of Legos

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