Nike Savvas
Atomic: full of love, full of wonder, 2005
Installation view at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne
polystyrene, nylon wire, paint, electric fans
dimensions variable

After inspiration comes motivation:

Great talk by Dan Pink, about what drives us, and how people are, and aren’t, motivated. Some surprising tests. Some initially counter intuitive results actually come to seem pretty obvious in hindsight, and so highlight some overlooked points about peoples perceived reward and satisfaction at work ( and in life generally). He talks about the effectiveness of using different types of rewards - Money versus the combination of challenge, freedom and purpose. Shows how using creativity is particularly relevant no matter what you do.

in Monster Munch

Made by RSA Animate. There are some interesting (animated) talks there.

Bellyfull by A boy in static.
You can watch the original flash animation at bellyfull.tv.

Determinismo  é a teoria filosófica de que todo acontecimento (inclusive o mental) é explicado pela determinação, ou seja, por relações de causalidade.

Embora, no seu sentido mais vulgar, determinismo se refira a uma causalidade redutora (a redução de todos os fenómenos do universo, por exemplo, à mecânica ou à química), a causalidade não é necessariamente sinónimo de reducionismo. Há vários tipos de determinismo, cada um definido pelo modo como determinação e causalidade são conceptualizados. Estes são os três mais básicos segundo a Wikipédia brazilês:

• Pré-determinismo: Se, como em Laplace, no teísmo e na teoria comportamental, supuséssemos que todo efeito está desde logo completamente presente na causa, chegamos a um determinismo mecanicista onde a determinação é colocada no passado, numa cadeia causal totalmente explicada pelas condições iniciais do universo.

• Pós-determinismo: Se, como na teleologia, supuséssemos que toda causalidade do universo é determinada por alguma finalidade, temos um determinismo mecanicista onde a determinação é posta no futuro pela imaginação de alguma entidade exterior ao universo causal (Deus).

• Co-determinismo: Se, como na teoria do caos, na teoria da emergência ou no conceito de rizoma, supuséssemos que nem todo efeito está totalmente contido na causa, isto é, que o próprio efeito pode simultaneamente interagir (causalmente) com outros efeitos, podendo inclusive acarretar um nível de realidade diferente do nível das causas anteriores (por exemplo a interacção no nível molecular formando um outro nível de realidade, a vida, ou a interação entre indivíduos formando um outro nível de realidade, a sociedade [a virtualidade]), temos um determinismo onde a determinação é colocada no presente ou na simultaneidade dos processos.

in Wikipédia (editado

Mais variedades de determinismo aqui.
Ver também causalidade,  comportamentalismo, determinismo ambiental.

The Rip by Portishead and NY Hotel by The Knife, respectively. Can't hear one without recalling the othe

Since we're into a Japanese music thing, what about Toryanse - a traditional children's song, the title of which literally means "Plese let me pass"? If you've been to Japan, maybe you have heard it in the road crossings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ommgK1dPwL0&feature=player_embedded

Or from Boogiepop Phantom (it also appears in the segment "Beyond" of "Animatrix2, in 2Lost in Translation", in "Lain", etc):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZTexwjxXb0

A more surprising (or not) source that uses the Toryanse theme is the song "Akashingo" ("red light/sign") from Lucky People Center who used it in their documentary "International":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqCEE9jovTU

Here it is, sang:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2CNNthajW0

Michael Cooke arranged it as part of a symphony, for a string quartet first and then for an orchestra. It is available here under the name Symphony No.3 IV "Shadows of Japanese Children" (2005).

[It's] a four-movement work based on Japanese music. A book found in a Dallas used bookstore, Unforgettable Fire, inspired it. Atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki filled this book with drawings and stories. Many were about children turned into ash statues - their shadows burned on the ground. This very powerful book reminds us that war is not a video game. This work is dedicated to those children.
The fourth movement, "In the Fallen Sun only Shadows Remain" makes use of two more folk melodies "Hora Nero Nen Nero" & "Toryanse". The title of this movement and the first movement come from lines in the beginning of Unforgettable Fire. *

More info at THAT ANIME BLOG

I've been dwelling through Jazz for quite some time. Some months ago I came across a 1965 album called Sakura Sakura from a gentleman called Hideo Shiraki plus his Quintet and + 3 Koto Girls. In there I found a jazz version of the traditional Japanese song "Sakura Sakura", not to mention a brutal interpretation of the Blue Mitchel standard "Alone Alone and Alone" played by the great Japanese trumpet player Terumasa Hino (Shirake is a drummer). After browsing a bit through youtube I found the following videos and felt like sharing.

This one reminds me of Ghost in the Shell:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKTRnO7SV68&feature=related

Terumasa Hino live at the Blue Note Fuji Festival:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jGpPzh6JYU

Traditional version of Sakura Sakura live:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS6z82b_r5k

Also if you feel like listening to some Japanese jazz, here's the album.

Moronic, foolish, senseless, brainless, mindless, idiotic, imbecile, insane, lunatic, asinine, ridiculous, ludicrous, absurd, preposterous, silly, inane, witless, half-baked, empty-headed, unintelligent, slow-witted, weak-minded; informal crazy, dumb, brain-dead, cretinous, imbecilic, doltish, thick, thickheaded, birdbrained, pea-brained, pinheaded, dopey, dim, dimwitted, halfwitted, dippy, fat-headed, blockheaded, boneheaded, lamebrained, chuckleheaded, dunderheaded, muttonheaded; daft, dumb-ass, chowderheaded, ignorant, dense, brainless, slow, dull, simple, stunned, vacuous, vapid, bovine, dozy, fat-headed, birdbrained, simpleminded, idiotic, obtuse, doltish, cretinous, soft in the head, boneheaded, wooden-headed, scatterbrained, nonsensical, unthinking, ill-advised, ill-considered, unwise, injudicious, laughable, risible, fatuous, mad, cracked, cockeyed, harebrained, nutty, batty, cuckoo, loony, loopy.

If you want to impugn someone's intelligence, the options are almost limitless. Thank god for that!

Don Carson, who worked as a Senior Show Designer for Walt Disney Imagineering, has argued that game designers can learn a great deal by studying techniques of “environmental storytelling,” which Disney employs in designing amusement park attractions: “The story element is infused into the physical space a guest walks or rides through. It is the physical space that does much of the work of conveying the story the designers are trying to tell [...]. Armed only with their own knowledge of the world, and those visions collected from movies and books, the audience is ripe to be dropped into your adventure. The trick is to play on those memories and expectations to heighten the thrill of venturing into your created universe” 

 JENKINS, Henry - GAME DESIGN AS NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE.

Read also:  CARSON, Don - Environmental Storytelling: Creating Immersive 3D Worlds Using Lessons Learned from the Theme Park Industry.

Visualisations from Eric Fisher detailing concentrations of tourists in cities around the world, using geotagged photos. Blue are photos taken by locals. Red by tourists. Via Information is Beautiful.

Oslo

 Paris

 Roma

 Barcelona

 Copenhaga

more after the break or on Eric Fisher's