the power of habit

I spent the majority of break reading The Power of Habit.... here are some of the notes I took while reading:

• "All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits" -William James
• More than 40% of actions people performed each day weren't actual decisions, but habits
• "chunking" = the root of how habits form - it's a process in which the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine
• habits are stored in the ganglia basal (an oval of cells in the brain that wasn't understood for years - central to recalling patterns and acting on them) even while the rest of the brain goes to sleep
• habits emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort
• three main parts of habits = cue ---> routine ---> reward
• habits can be ignored, changed or replaced but they never really disappear because they're encoded into the structures of our brain
• the brain can't tell the difference between bad and good habits
• without habit loops (cue ---> routine ---> reward) the brain would shut down
• habits as much as memory and reason are at the root of how we behave
• craving is what powers the habit loop and causes cues/rewards to work
• habits are powerful because they create neurological cravings (occur gradually so that we're often blind to their influence)
• to overpower a habit you have to recognize which craving is driving the behavior
• to change a habit follow the 'Golden Rule of Habit Change' = keep the old cue and deliver the old reward but insert a new routine

I also tracked/documented 5 of my habits for a week...

...and then took away the lines/dates/times just for fun to see what it looked like more abstracted...

reading

I have started looking up possible things to read and really dive into.. this book looked like something I could benefit from. I read an article/interview with the author about the book and it spoke about why we can focus on other things while doing something routine (like driving) and what parts of the brain it involves. I think it would help me, so I plan on getting it asap and going from there.

a lot of thinking...

I spent a lot of time this weekend writing and re-writing my thesis. A majority of my time was spent thinking/researching and trying to organize my thoughts, and after many revisions I have my new proposal/explanation (John – could you update my proposal on the site to this):

As children, we live with a balance of routine and spontaneity. We know when it's time for bed, time to eat, time to play, etc. but we are also surprised with birthday parties, play dates, field trips, or outings to various places. Even routine outings (such as grocery shopping) would include some spontaneity because our imaginations would run wild. But as we get older, it seems that everyone gets bogged down in routine.

School, work, even hanging out with friends turns into something that is so routine we almost float through it without any appreciation. Too much routine, a lack of new experiences, disguises itself as something it's not. It makes us think our lives are peaceful and content, but in reality it stifles, frustrates, and leaves us feeling restless and anxious. Too much routine causes people to question “Is this all there is?” and in turn suffocates success and happiness.

Humans are not meant to do the same things over and over again. Just as we are meant to exercise and challenge our muscles constantly to stay young, energetic, and healthy, we are also meant to exercise and challenge our minds, hearts, and spirits to stay young, energetic and happy. But how can that be done when some routines (school, driving, grocery shopping, etc.) are completely necessary?

The answer is to actually pay attention to your surroundings and look in places you normally wouldn't. New things are all around us, we just need to open our eyes and look for them. My thesis is a commentary on the fact that people tend to drift through these routine situations and also an attempt at forcing myself to stop doing that.

I will go about doing so by forcing myself to pay closer attention to what I'm doing/where I'm going, using my video glasses to record the routine situations and then creating pieces to reflect on that. I've decided that I want all of my pieces to include some type of transparent medium. Transparency is defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary as “having the property of transmitting light without appreciable scattering so that bodies lying behind are seen clearly” and in routine situations there are things lying behind something (or right in front of your face) that could be seen clearly if people were looking.

Since I spent the weekend doing a lot of thinking/writing and not any making I want to start doing tests/experiments that actually go with my proposal...I plan to keep projecting different videos onto water in different ways, then move on to using glass to do different tests, and various other transparent mediums. I want to do a bunch of tests on a bunch of mediums and then pick specific ones to pursue to a final stage.

more experimenting

I finally got youtube to work! I put up little clips of what I've been doing (what you saw last class, and what I've done since). The account is rwallacethesis and will hopefully be changed once I come up with a title for my project.

I've continued experimenting with my videos and projecting them onto different surfaces. I want to do as little editing on screen as possible and instead play with how they're projected. For now, I'm not paying any attention to sound and focusing solely on the videos/images.

I've been working on how to put into words what I'm trying to do to better explain myself. Here's what I've come up with:

Taking routine situations/events that everyone experiences and abstractly depicting them with a medium relating to my specific experience. A commentary on the fact that people tend to drift through routine situations/events without paying close attention to everything around them, and my attempt at forcing myself to stop doing that and analyze the routine things. The medium I choose for each video will be what stuck out to me in the moment or what I spent the most time noticing.

...still not sure if that makes much sense, and I'm still working on trying to get the words out of my head... so many more updates will come...

Over the weekend I spent time thinking and testing out the new glasses. I shot videos almost everywhere I went then watched the videos each night. I decided that I want to focus on (what I consider to be) routine situations such as going to the grocery store, driving, etc. I'll narrow it down to a few specific things once I get more footage. I want to focus on routine situations because even though they're pretty straight forward video and most people have experienced each situation for themselves, it's a personal experience and different for everyone when they're actually there. I want to distort the videos in some way to depict how I felt or what I was thinking during each situation so that the video becomes a personal reflection on an action I did. I also want to play with the sound and mash up sounds together/put the wrong audio with a video/etc. to make it even more personal and harder to figure out what is even happening.

I experimented distorting the video (ignoring the sound aspect) by taking stills that caught my eye and zooming in then doing line drawings of them and projecting the video through them. I also projected the videos onto water with a faucet on so that the water was rippling through the video. I want to experiment a lot more. 

I made a few accounts on video hosting sites...but that didn't work out. I left that as the last thing to do (yesterday afternoon) and somehow spent most of the day trying to figure it out. At first, all websites would only let me upload one video because of the size. So I exported them in smaller sizes and only short clips just to get the main idea across and youtube let one upload and then gave me a message that said "The server has rejected the file. Please follow these steps and upload the file again." but the steps didn't help and I kept getting the same message after waiting 30-50 minutes for it to go through the act of uploading and at the last second tell me no. So I need to spend time figuring that out too.

my glasses came!

a possible break through...?

After a lot of researching I might of finally found a good direction to go in (hopefully!)
I spent a full day researching different things that kept leading me to new things. I started with father-daughter relationships, then father-son relationships, then just relationships, then stepped back and re-looked at everything I'd been reading and started researching living in the moment because it was a common thread among everything. After I got through all the inspiring websites on how to live in the moment I had a break through! One of the sites said:

No matter what you're doing, notice the moments that surround you. Maybe on your way to work or school, you go over a beautiful bridge, or you get a view of the sunrise behind the city buildings. When you walk down the street, look at the way the light reflects off the buildings, the tree line, and the birds that manage to nest in random corners and cracks. The simple act of tilting your chin can give you a whole new perspective on the place you live.

I was inspired by the thought of looking where you usually don't to find things and trying not to miss everything when you're out and about. So step one: I bought video glasses that I'm going to wear when I go out and then re-watch my days and look for what I missed. It's more of an exercise for myself then an actual piece for my show, but it could turn into something. Step two: the actual work I plan on doing is taking my photographs of random places that most people ignore and tracing the lines/shapes. But, while I'm tracing the lines and shapes I'm going to make decisions on what to leave out or if anything needs to be added. And then I want to use wire to recreate the simplified drawings in a 3D form. Since the project is turning into me trying to live in the moment and sharing what I discover I kind of want the photographs to be represented in a way that people wont be able to connect the final product to a photograph without some help.

 

still thinking...

So, I'm still in the thinking and brainstorming phase. I got some books (Tuesdays with Morrie, The Last Lecture, For One More Day, and Have a Little Faith). I went to the bookstore with Tuesdays with Morrie in mind, and then found the others as I was digging through the book racks. I've started reading Tuesdays with Morrie and going through and taking out quotes that I think match with the theme I've been looking at and writing them on index cards and placing them with the index cards I had made of quotes from the letters. I also noticed that the book also focuses a lot on the need for love and ignoring material possessions. My plan now is to start making something to get my brain thinking in a different way. Since I don't really have a set plan of what I'm going to do I might just start by re-desiging the Tuesdays with Morrie book cover and start designing a book of all the letters. Im' hoping that actually designing something involving the material I've been working with will give me other ideas.

Thought process...

Since I've changed my topic, I've been spending a lot of time brain storming and doing the initial research to come up with a set plan. My first step was to take all of the letters I had and copy/scan them so that I had versions to write my thoughts all over and be able to reproduce more to mark up. (which took so long!) Then, I started going through the letters and taking out quotes from each letter that summed it up. I wrote them on flashcards so that it was easier for me to sort through them and stay organized, and I ended up realizing that most of the letters themes are to focus on the journey not the destination and to live in the moment.

The quotes that I decided express that are:

"Enjoy where you are, where you are going and the journey in between"

"Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it." -Greg Anderson

"Take time to enjoy whatever moment you are in before moving on to the next one!"

"So, know that at any point where Yin - dark, down, perhaps sad - may be winning out, very soon thereafter Yang - bright, up, happy - will shift and displace Yin. Trust that it will, look for it to arrive and welcome it when it does! Be aware of - and as importantly learn from - the contrasting experiences!"

"I am left to conclude that sometimes joy is found in the journey itself and not the destination." (a re-quote from my dad of the Greg Anderson quote he used)

"Every moment in the here and now is a future memory so cherish the moment!"

"What matters is to live in the present, live now, for every moment is now. It is your thoughts and acts of the moment that create your future. The outline of your future path already exists, for you created it's pattern by your past." - Sai Baba

"I am encouraging you to not limit yourself to self perceived boundaries, to be aware of the journeys or enlightenment ahead of you and learn all that you can from them."

"It just seems that, like the waves in the ocean, the future keeps lapping at our feet and receding to make way for the next wave. I think every so often we need to look up from enjoying the waves and appreciate the beauty and magnificence of the ocean and sky and sand and sun and person sitting next to us"

"So, while I believe it is important to stop and smell the roses [or insert your favorite flower here] I think it is at least important, and perhaps more so, to stop and listen..."

"Or, maybe the thrill of the ride and uncertainty of where you will bounce next is an experience beyond belief."

After I decided what the over all theme I want to focus on is, I spent some time seeing what days the letters were written (28 on Fridays, 7 on Thursdays, 1 on a Monday, and 1 on a Tuesday) and then I took those dates and used my old calendars/daily planners to figure out where I was on those days while my dad was writing the letters to me. I'm not really sure what (or if) I'm going to use any of that information, but it was a good exercise to record all the information and let my brain try to put pieces together.

Other than all of the documenting/organizing I've been doing with the information, I've mostly been brainstorming. I came across an image of the inauguration ball:

and that got me thinking about how living in the moment and fully experiencing the journey is often tainted by the over abundance of technology. I haven't figured out exactly how I want to incorporate that, but I thought it was interesting.

I still want to make some sort of book, mostly because I haven't come up with how to execute my ideas so I thought that starting a book would give me something to do and help my ideas flow. I was thinking of taking the letters and emphasizing the quotes that I've already taken from them along with possibly depicting what I was doing or what was going on in my life and the world when they were sent to me so that the whole book would show my journey through college. As of now the piece would just be a way that people could better see and understand how my idea came about. But, as usual, I'm still not sure.

After all this I feel like I'm finally starting to get a topic and slowly discovering a direction to go that I'll be passionate about. 

Media/Brands

I've been paying extra close attention to commercials and looking at the subconscious elements that brands use to sell more of their product. The 2013 Toyota Avalon commercial is one that really caught my eye. My notes of what happens in the commercial followed by my evaluation of the commercial is as follows:

The commercial starts off with some type of faucet/sink/spout that drips a black substance (one can assume it's ink) into a large body of water. The ink swirls and moves gracefully (all while graceful, calm music plays). The ink blots form Rorschach tests (leaving the viewer to interpret images on their own). The ink then drips down and slowly forms into the car...from top to bottom. A soothing man's voice then says "let's take every drop of courage. every ounce of inspiration. every bit of determination. and go where we've never gone before." The music then starts to speed up while the water in the "tank" drains and everything seems to get more intense. This is all happening in a blank, concrete room and there's not much detail in the background or the floor. There are close up shots of the car, and the headlight goes on. The shots are really intense. After some close ups of the car and the water drains, the car drives away towards a random beam of light. The commercial then zooms out to a picture of the car driving, which is surrounded by other photos of wholesome things (such as a girls soccer team, a happy family, etc). The photos morph into a globe shape and then transform into the toyota logo. "Toyota, let's go places"

The whole commercial sets the mood from the very beginning. They play calming music that then turns intense and "cool" to emphasize the feeling that they want the car to give off. The commercial in itself oozes "cool" and hints that if you get this car you will be "the coolest person ever." There are barely any references to the car itself. There are also no references to pros and cons of buying the car. All the audience gets from the viewing is that they will be cool if they buy this car.