Ken's Blog

This evening we are in an art gallery space in lower Manhattan, iterating on a virtual reality dance performance that we will soon be putting on. Everybody is working very intensely, iterating, fixing bugs, tweaking colors and timing, as well as all sorts of other things.

I am discovering that these sorts of production meetings can end up being their own kind of performance. There is an ebb and flow, a rhythm to the evening, that in its way is quite compelling.

I am reminded a bit of the first time I saw “behind the scenes” footage of the Beatles working in the studio. Their end goal was to create a set of polished songs to the world, each one to appear as a flawless gem of musical perfection.

Yet the messy process of creation itself, the sequence of iterations, the failed attempts and near misses, were in a way more fascinating than the final product.

I was on a panel this evening about the future evolution of VR. At one point I made the argument that people who try to “make their film in VR” are getting it very wrong. In fact, I argued, VR is essentially the very opposite of cinema.

The most salient feature of a movie is that everybody in the audience sees exactly the same thing. The goal of a cinematographer, an editor, a lighting designer in movie making is, in fact, to optimize for a single viewpoint. The craft of filmmaking is built around this fundamental imperative.

In contrast, future content in VR will have far more in common with theater: Everybody will see events unfold from their own unique viewpoint. VR has even more in common with immersive theater, in which audience members are free to roam around on their own.

Pre-cybernetic versions of this kind of experience stretch back for centuries. Recent examples include the current Sleep no More, as well as both Tony and Tina’s Wedding and Tamara from a generation ago.

Those experiences could be experienced only by relatively audiences — unlike a movie, which can be seen by hundreds of millions of people. VR holds the promise of combining the best of both worlds: the sense of participation of immersive theater, as well as the potential for massive distribution we see today in cinema.

The sorts of emergent talents needed to make this kind of content will probably not come mainly from the world of filmmaking. They are more likely to come from the worlds of interactive theater and game design.

I attended a panel discussion today about spirituality and the brain. Much of the discussion focused on the use of psychotropic drugs to induce altered mental states that may be conducive to spiritual growth.

One of the panelists relate his experiences, and the other panelist asked him a metaphysical question: whether he thought that such experiences are “real”. For example, if you have a spiritual conversation while under the influence of a psychotropic drug with a deceased friend, did you really have a conversation with that person?

In the end, they concluded that the question is irrelevant. Because the goal of such experiences is to advance along your own path to spriritual growth, it doesn’t matter whether you were talking to a “real” entity, or just to a construct that you’ve formed in your own mind. What you are actually doing is connecting with an important part of yourself.

I found myself thinking about stories. When we read a novel, or see a play or a movie, we know that the characters we encounter don’t actually exist. Yet we allow them to take us on an emotional journey — one that can be even more profound and powerful precisely because we experienced it within the “magic circle” of willing suspension of disbelief.

All such experiences, whether chemical, literary, meditative or other, are gateways to another part of our own possibility space. And there are many such gateways. That’s one of the fun things about being human.

I was on a panel this morning with two other panelists and a moderator. The topic itself was rich and fascinating. Yet from my perspective the experience was a disappointment. And I think it was a matter of structure.

OK, here’s how the panel was structured: After each of the panelists had briefly introduced our work, the moderator started asking questions for each of us to answer in turn. When we were all done answering each question, she would then ask a different question. This went on until we ran out of time.

The problem with this structure was that there was no way for the panelists to engage each other in a conversation. I had many things to say in response to the extremely interesting things the other panelists were saying — sometimes agreeing, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes just riffing off their thoughts — but none of that ever happened.

There was no back and forth, no exploring of ideas between the panelists to synthesize something new. The nearest we ever got to an organic conversation was a brief exchange I had with one of the other panelists before the list of questions ever started.

In his intro, he had talked about some of his research that involved administering pain to volunteers in order to study whether VR would reduce their response to pain. Before I began my intro, I jokingly asked him “Wow, how did you get IRB approval for that?”

He jokingly responded “It’s ok. It’s for science!” And then I said, “Yeah, that always works out well.” The audience laughed, and it looked like the start of a really interesting discussion thread.

But that was the last moment any of us panelists had a chance to address each other. After that, it was all just Q&A. There was no opportunity for humor, or irony, or creative energy of any sort between the panelists. To me it all seemed very, very dry, and the audience missed out on what could have been a lively and illuminating discussion.

I am wondering whether I should say anything to the moderator about this. I appreciate having been invited to participate, and I don’t want to sound critical, but this might be a case where a little constructive criticism could result in future panels being better.

These virtual worlds
To which we are always drawn
Are they our future?

I vividly remember the Lousiana Governor’s election in 1991, as does everyone I know from this country who was old enough back then to follow politics. It was, after all, one of the most notorious elections in American history. Former Governor Edwin Edwards was running for election, and his challenger was the neo-Nazi and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke.

To put this election in context, it is important to point out that the corruption of the Edwards administration was not only very widely known, it was legendary. At the time of that election, he was already facing multiple federal indictments, including mail fraud, corruption of justice, and bribery (he was eventually found guilty of racketeering charges and sentenced to ten years in Federal prison).

By 1991 Edwards had lost the Governorship, and had completely fallen from power. Many people had written off his chances for a comeback. But then he got lucky: His opponent turned out to be a neo-Nazi former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

To many people, given how scary Duke was, Edwards was very much the lesser of two evils. One bumper sticker during that election read: “Vote For the Crook. It’s Important.”

Edwards won the election.

So when Donald Trump said, when told by Jake Tapper on CNN that David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the KKK was supporting him, that he didn’t know who Duke was, Donald Trump was lying. He wasn’t maybe sort of kind of lying. He was flat out lying.

Just to avoid any confusion, Tapper clarified the question: “I’m just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here,” to which Trump responded “I don’t know David Duke … I just don’t know anything about him.”

In fact the Donald had himself previously publicly condemned Duke and his racist extremism. Trump knew exactly who Duke is. Millions of Americans who were over the age of twenty in 1991 know exactly who Duke is.

So the question I have is, why lie?

Let’s be generous here and posit, as implausible as it might be, that Trump had somehow simply forgotten one of the most notorious figures in American politics. If somebody tells you that the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (whoever they may be) supports your candidacy, shouldn’t you immediately disavaow that endorsement?

The only theory I can come up with is this: Maybe the Trump campaign, building on resentment in certain quarters about the ethnicity of our current President, is betting that there are more racist white voters in the U.S. than there are black voters.

I can’t think of any other theories. Maybe somebody else can.

As a thought experiment, I’ve been imagining how else we might appear to each other, other than as our literal selves, if we were all to walk around wearing future reality glasses. There are many possibilities.

We could choose to appear to each other as space aliens, as dolphins, or as glowing points of astral light. I am particularly intrigued by the possibility of appearing as robots.

There is something elegant about everyone choosing to look like a robot in the early stages of future reality. For one thing, it reiterates the basic theme of physical presence refracted through the lens of high technology. What could possibly be a more iconic symbol of that theme than the robot?

For another, this approach gracefully avoids the problem of the uncanny valley. For example, when we talk to each other on the telephone, and all that we perceive of each other is voice, then we accept the reality of that voice. We don’t say “oh, this is a vocal representation of my friend John.” Rather, we just feel that we are talking to John.

A visual representation of John as a robot similarly sidesteps all questions of fidelity. The robot represents John, but could never be mistaken for John. So it becomes simply a token of his presence in the conversation. Our own knowledge of John is then free to fill in the rest.

Or at least, that is the hypothesis. To see if it really works that way, we’ll just need to try it and see.

Visiting the Montreal Botanical Gardens last weekend, I thoroughly enjoyed the huge variety of exotic plants on display. The sheer variety of flora, gathered from all climes and all regions of the world, was overwhelming and delightful.

One particular species of plant, hanging on the wall, looked for all the world like what antlers would look like, if they belonged to the plant kingdom. You can see for yourself, below.

If I were going to open a vegan hunting lodge, I would definitely hang these on the walls.

If sometime in the future we are all walking around in the physical world, and we are sporting eyewear that lets us see whatever we want, then we are going to be shown things that are consistent with the immediate physical world around us. Walls, chairs, tables, and other potential physical hazards are going to be made visible.

But beyond that, anything is possible. In particular, we might find that the question of whether an other person is “present” becomes interestingly complicated. For example, we may see another person standing in the room with us, but that person might actually be physically located in another part of the world.

Or perhaps that’s not a real person at all, but an NPC (non-player character), a behavioral simulation created through an Artificial Intelligence algorithm.

Another possibility: Maybe there really is a person standing in front of you, but you can’t see them — in this alternate view of reality they are invisible. This option would be useful, for example, for immersive theatre. When you open a window, you can feel the wind blowing in your face. You just don’t see the person standing in front of you holding a fan.

Yet another possibility: You see a person, but you are actually physically interacting with a robot. When you shake that person’s hand, you are actually shaking a puppet hand. The robot can either be teleoperated by an actual human being, or can be actuated algorithmically by computer.

The more you think about this, the more possibilities present themselves. I don’t know how things will end up playing out, but I’m already convinced that future reality is going to be a very interesting place.

When Adolph Hitler was rising to power during the time of the Weimar Republic, he didn’t need to personally beat up, terrorize and assault all of those who would oppose him. Instead, he relied on a large coterie of bullies, known as Brown Shirts, who did that dirty work for him.

If you were one of his political opponents, you might one day find your windows smashed in, your name smeared, your family members attacked and brutalized. Potential opponents realized, fairly quickly, that the personal costs of politically opposing the future Chancellor of Germany were prohibitive. In the face of such unchecked terror, opposition melted away.

I am not sure there is an essential difference between the tactics of the National Socialists in 1932 and those of the Trump campaign today. Sure, all Trump and his spokespeople actually do is fabricate crazy charges against those who offend them. For example, that’s what they did to Cheri Jacobus, a Republican strategist who recently dared to criticize Trump for skipping the Iowa debate.

They knew that their on-line Brown Shirts would do the rest. Jacobus was promptly set upon by an army of on-line Trump followers: terrorized, slut-shamed, threatened with death, smeared relentlessly — horribly brutalized as a cautionary example for those who would dare oppose The Donald.

As far as I can see, Trump is essentially promising, with every speech, that he will continue these scorched earth tactics if he is elected. The concept of “representative democracy”, as we now define it, will come to seem a quaint notion, a silly idea doomed to failure, just as the Weimar Republic came to be seen.

The Western world has already lived through one Hitler in the last century. And he wasn’t the only such bully — he was just the one with the most successful brand name. What astonishes me is that anybody in this country would vote for a candidate who promises, once again, to create a society based on naked bullying and intimidation.