What I found most interesting about Andy Clark’s piece “Re-Inventing Ourselves: The Plasticity of Embodiment, Sensing, and Mind” were his notions regarding how our senses enable us to connect to the world, and how we are able to unconsciously extend the perception of our body to encompass new possibilities for actions provided by “external resources.”

Sensors as Channels
Andy Clark describes our sensors as high-bandwidth channels that allow environmental factors to influence our behavior on a continuos basis. When we are performing a task we “open a channel” by tuning our focus to relevant sets of sensory resources. These high-bandwidth channels provide continuous streams of information that are used to guide our behavior. Clark uses the term “Agent-World Circuit” to refer to the agent-world couplings enabled by sensors channels.

This model of sensors as channels does a great job at describing the continuous process of feedback and adjustment that is at the core of DJ mixing. For a DJ to mix two different tracks they must tune in to their “auditory channel” and use the continuous stream of audio information to guide adjustments to the tempo of the tracks being mixed.

Extending Our Body Schema
The body schema refers to “a suite of neural settings that implicitly define a body in terms of its capabilities for action.” This part of our brain is extremely plastic, and can be trained and calibrated to integrate external resources into its definition of the “body”. According to Clark, our ability to extend the body schema is what makes us “profoundly embodied agents” rather than mere tool users.

One question that interests me related the concept of Body Schema, is how does this concept relate to the experience of flow.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working to aggregate all the data for the MoodyJulio project into a single database. This process has been rather painful so I am happy to report that I’ve been able to make a lot of progress on this project over the past week.

My first success was achieved last week, when I finished reading and processing a few million lines of data captured via my mobile tracker. All told I have upload over 4 million data entries into my project database. These entries feature my heart rate, galvanic skin response, along with basic information about my mood/emotion and a timestamp.

My latest success was in figuring out how to use the Processing and the Posterous API to download data from my personal mood journal. Though the Posterous API is quite simple, I have little experience working with web service APIs and the documentation available online is skimpy at best. Also, the Posterous API requires http authentication, which took me a while to sort our.

After a lot of research and hard work I was able to get Processing and Posterous to play nice together. To help other inexperienced Processing developers who want to use web APIs that require http authentication, I have put together a simple Processing sketch that makes this an easy task. Below is the code the I developed for this very purpose.

I just joined Transportation Alternatives (TA), an organization that advocates for the rights of cyclists, pedestrians, and public transit users in New York City. I am a frequent user of public transportation and an avid bicycle rider and I strongly support the goals of this organization.

This past week I joined Transportation Alternative and signed-up to participate in the NYC Century Bike Tour with a team from Habitat Music. We will ride 100-miles through Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn. As a group we have committed to raising $2,000 for Transportation Alternatives.

You can support me and the Habitat Music team by making a donation to Transportation Alternatives on my personal fundraising page (http://ta.convio.net/goto/julioterra). You can also support Transportation Alternatives by becoming a member, joining the Street Activist Network, or volunteering. You can become a member for $36 to receive the following benefits:

• Four issues of the award winning Reclaim Magazine
• Copy of T.A.’s commuter cycling handbook “Biking Rules”
• Discounts at 100 area bike shops
• Over $30 discount on Kryptonite bike locks
• NYC Cycling Map and more

View Graffiti Tour, Vila Madalena & Pinheiros – August 2010 in a larger map

I’ve been a fan of graffiti and street art since the late eighties and early nineties. To me, the most appealing aspect of this artform has always been its accessibility – in regard to both subject matter and location. My hometown of Sao Paulo has had a thriving street art culture for a long time, though I only became aware of it in the early 90′s when I returned to Brasil after living in Canada for many years.

More recently, the quality and quantity of street art in Sao Paulo has grown to rival that of other centers such as New York and London. I have a personal passion for the warm and colorful styles that have come out of this South American graffiti capital and have long been sharing with my friends the pictures and stories from my explorations. During my latest trip to Brasil I decided to put together the first in a series of street art walking tour maps for Sao Paulo.

These maps are intended for anyone with an interest in street art that happens to find themselves in this great metropolis. Vila Madalena is likely the neighborhood with the highest density of high-quality graffiti tags and artists in Sao Paulo. It has long been considered one of the cities coolest bairros and it is home to its most prominent street art gallery. Therefore, I thought it was an appropriate location to kick-off this series. I hope you enjoy.

Here is a link to a collection of all my Sao Paulo street art pictures from the past 3 and half years.

This is an awesome TED video from Chimamanda Adichie. In this video, Chimamanda explores how the limited spectrum of stories that are told about Africa have had a negative impact on the the global community’s perspective about this continent. What I took away from this video is the importance that stories play in the process of creating reality at an individual and communal level.

On a personal level I realized how the stories govern how I feel about people, objects, and other entities. I also realize how the prevailing narrative regarding any one person or thing is extremely dynamic. Sometimes an emotionally charged story can overshadow a rich web of other stories that make up a relationship. An obvious example is when a person is so angry with a loved one that they are blinded to that person’s endearing attributes.

Thinking further about this topic a few days after watching this video I had another insight. The stories that are repeated most often in my mind become the leading strands in a pool of narratives that govern my relationships to the world around me – my wife, cat, family, school, friends, etc.

This leads to the following question:

• What is the best way to leverage/control/transform my automatic meaning and story-making faculties to create a fulfilling life?
• What practices can I put into action to enable me to better guide/control/transform the creation of these unspoken narratives in my mind? How can I insert new stories into the mix? How can reduce the rotation of existing stories? etc.
• How can we design systems that help people guide/control/transform the unspoken narratives that they create about their own lives?

Of course we could get into a discussion here about meditation and other practices of quieting the mind. This is all very relevant stuff, as a matter of fact I have been incorporating these practices into my own life. That said, this is outside the realm of this current post though I plan to explore more fully in future years once I have more experience with such activities.

Last week I decided to collaborate with Morgen Fleisig on a game submission for this year’s Come Out & Play Festival, which will be held in Brooklyn for the first time. Since submissions are due on March 19th we are scrambling to put together the mechanics for our game, which is named after and inspired by the Battle of Brooklyn.

The main inspiration for developing this game was to create an experience that brings to light all of the different layers of history that can be found in Brooklyn. This includes but is in no way just limited to the historic Battle of Brooklyn.

Before I proceed with sharing the initial ideas we have for the game, let me provide a very brief overview of this historic battle. Since I am just learning about it I took all of this content from the Brooklyn Online website. Morgen was the instigator in regards to the game concept.

The Battle of Brooklyn took place in 1776 shortly after the revolutionaries declared independence from England. It was a very brutal battle, British soldier went so far as to impaling revolutionary soldiers that were captured. Luckily for the revolutionaries the weather played to their advantage, holding back the British ships for a few days and providing time for Washington and his artillery to escape.

Now back to the game idea. From a high-level perspective we want to create a game where two separate teams are fighting for territory around the Prospect Park and Gowanus Canal area of Brooklyn. We have been going back and forth on the extent to which we want to create mechanics that mimic the battle from 1776.

For example, do we want to teams of different sizes (e.g. the brits had a much larger army)? What about making one team easier to spot than the other (e.g. red coats vs. guerilla-like revolutionaries)?

One interesting navigational mechanism that we are considering is giving players a historic map of Brooklyn to guide their battle for territory. Players would need to be able to use this historic to find their way around modern day Brooklyn.

In regards to the scoring mechanism we are still considering many different possibilities. These include using GPS-tagged pictures, leveraging chalk drawing, incorporating physical interactions between players, or integrating found objects in creative ways.

Over the next week, as we continue to evolve this game idea, I will share additional updates here. Please provide us with your thoughts and input to help us make this game as fun as possible. Our goal is to have you want to come out and play it as well!