Ken's Blog

Sometimes when I’m programming I look back at old code that I wrote long ago and I am surprised. I say to myself “I wonder what was going on in that guy’s mind.”

There are times when I think “Would, he really didn’t have a clue, did he? I’m just going to have to fix this now.”

Then there are other times when I look at code that I wrote some time ago and I think “This guy is so much smarter than I am. I have no idea how he figured out how to do that.”

I’m not sure what it all means. Is what I am describing some failure of long term memory? Or is it just the fact that we use multiple parts of our mind when we do something like programming a computer?

I know that technically I’m talking about a single-person activity. But sometimes it sure feels a hell of a lot like collaborating with somebody I don’t quite know.

There are tasks we never get around to doing because they seem overwhelming. Then there are other tasks we break down into little pieces, doing a little bit every day.

I freely admit that there are quite a few tasks that for me fall squarely into the first category. In fact I may never get around to doing them. I look up at that mountain and all I see is insurmountable height.

On the other hand I have practices that fall very much into the second category. For example, most mornings I wake up very early and head to the lab. Before anybody else shows up I have already put in a solid two hours of programming.

If you were to up all of the time I spend programming every year, it comes to quite a lot. And yet it doesn’t seem like a lot, because I divide the work into those manageable little chunks.

And it doesn’t even seem like work, because I love programming. Perhaps one definition of what we love is whatever we make sure to do a little bit every day.

Sometimes we take umbrage at what people say, even though what they said was completely inoffensive. Perhaps the encounter has triggered some trauma from our past. In such cases, we are not really dealing with the reality before us, but with demons from our own mind.

What if you could load an app on your phone that would record and map your emotional response to various things that people said to you? Eventually, as technology advances, such an app could measure such things as facial expression, vocal timbre, heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductivity, posture, pupil dilation and gaze saccades, to name just some of the many physiological indicators of mood.

With this data, your app could correlate your emotional responses with the objective reality of what was actually said to you. It could then search for and highlight discrepancies between input and response.

The resulting analysis could help you to better understand your own emotional responses, and perhaps to modify them over time. You might end up living a happier and less needlessly stressful life.

I wonder whether such an app would be popular.

On the train back to NYC yesterday after a visit up to the country, I pointed my phone out the window and took this photo.

The resulting image is a perfect reflection of my state of mind at that particular moment.

Behind every compelling story there is a psychological structure that the audience senses but may not explicitly acknowledge or be aware of. When I think of the songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney I think of such a structure.

Fundamentally we are talking about two men, each of whose creative energy arises from his formative experience as a young boy in working class Liverpool.

The young Paul McCartney was a happy child who felt loved by his mother and was eager to communicate that feeling of love and security to the entire world. For John Lennon it was very different.

John’s energy is that of a man who had lost his mother when still just a boy, and thereafter always felt slightly unmoored. His brooding and intense lyrics suggest a man searching for love but never quite sure that it exists.

I think it is the combination of those two complementary energies which creates the powerful psychological underpinning that audiences respond to in the brilliant songwriting of these two young geniuses. Between them, their themes run the gamut from love and security on the one hand to constant doubtful searching for love on the other.

In the human drama, there are few more compelling narratives than the two faces of our eternal search for love.

One of the stranger things about existence is that everything seems normal. You are born, you grow up surrounded by fellow creatures much like yourself, you become socialized.

So a lot of things just fall under that category of “normal”, because that’s the way it is and that’s the way it has always been. As far as you can tell, that’s the way it will always continue to be.

But every once in a while you catch yourself looking at something “normal”, and find yourself thinking “wait, this is weird.” Recently I have been thinking that way about sleep.

Imagine visitors from another planet who have no concept of sleep. Unlike us, their biology does not require it.

Such beings would not need to spend roughly one third of every day in an unconscious and essentially helpless state. They might be amazed to see that we, fellow intelligent beings with whom they have just held a perfectly nice conversation, are suddenly collapsing all around.

Our visitors would never dream. They wouldn’t even have the concept of dreaming until we have described it to them.

I am trying to imagine how sleep-prone creatures like us would seem to such observers. I’m pretty sure they would find us to be intriguingly non-normal.

Some people worry that as techniques of procedural animation develop, the result will be less work for animators. I beg to disagree.

The reason any of this is an issue is a consequence of the forthcoming wearables, which will soon replace SmartPhones. Wearables lead inevitably to ubiquitous augmented reality, which will pretty much demand the presence of interactive procedurally animated characters.

I’ll explain. In order for responsive augmented reality characters to work properly, they will need to be driven not by traditional animation techniques, but rather by procedural animation. But that doesn’t mean animators will be out of a job.

In fact, when animated characters go completely procedural, they will need to be trained by great animators. So the animators will not be creating animations individually, but rather will be “training by example”, functioning essentially as acting coaches for a new breed of virtual actor.

This means that the value created by the animator will be monetized in the form of licensable I.P., rather than by payment for animation services on a specific production. This will be great for the animator.

That’s because it’s always better to be paid for use of one’s property, rather than relying on an hourly wage. A good animator will have the opportunity to make a lot more money, because her creative output will be able to be used on many productions — and she will not even need to be involved in those productions.

This evening I got a dance lesson from a friend who really knows how to dance. It was wonderful and fun and enlightening, but also humbling.

The experience made me realize how much I generally live within my head, and not within my body. I wonder how many experiences I am missing by not having my full body involved in the processes of my mind.

Something my friendly dance instructor said really stuck with me. She told me “I need to teach you not to think.”

Yes, I can see that. There is ancient wisdom in the body. Alas, it is a particular form of wisdom that the mind can all too easily forget.

I am reminded of Zen and the Art of Archery: You can’t think your way to learning how not to think.

Late breaking news in today’s NY Times (lightly edited for style):

White House Doesn’t Abstain from Denying Trump Didn’t Avoid Saying Russia Isn’t Refraining from Not Targeting U.S.

Asked whether Russia hadn’t stopped “still targeting” the United States, President Trump did not deny declining to eschew saying “No,” and so evaded desisting from appearing to not fail to contradict assertions from none other than his own intelligence chief.

Hours after the comments, the latest in a dizzying series of conflicting statements, the White House said Mr. Trump was answering a different question.

Right from the start I knew today was going to be a long day. For some reason I woke up around 5:30am, so I got into the lab long long before anybody else.

By the time anyone else arrived I had gotten all of those things done that I had been telling myself I really aught to do (but hadn’t). And then other people started showing up.

At which point the day turned into an hours long hack-fest. For most of the day, the members of our little team were huddled together working intensely on the project we will be showing at SIGGRAPH four weeks from now.

And then I headed up to Lincoln Center to see Visconti’s The Leopard. I had seen it before, but never on a big screen with a gorgeous print (which is really the only way to see a Visconti film).

My friend had never seen anything directed by Visconti — or any movie starring Burt Lancaster for that matter — which really added to the fun and magic.

Looking back, I would say it was a good day.