Reading response C

Comments on excerpts from Vacuuming and Digesting: Attention

BW My experience before coming here was that I really enjoyed the site’s energy. I did notice that it gives a good overview of what graphic design at Yale is like, but that’s only one of the four graduate majors. I often wonder what other departments’ experience of the site is because I don’t see as many sculptors, photographers, and painters.

ZR These thoughts are pretty incomplete and fragmented but deal with the idea of expiry… On a cultural scale, we seem to be balancing on a razor's edge between infinite duration and infinitesimal duration. I can think a couple of examples. On the short side of things: - SnapChat aptly (apptly—lol) comes up. - Sometimes I get email notifications on my lock screen that are not there when I open my email - There is a cold caesium atomic clock in Switzerland. It can operate with less than one second of variation over the course of 30 million years. And in quantum physics, scientists / mathematicians are dealing with theoretical units of time in the order of 1 second 10^-40. - There are also a few games out there that operate on extremely limited "time" constraints such as One Life where players are allowed to play only once until death, after which there are locked out of the game forever. -- On one hand it's peculiar because it's unusual for what we think of as games. On the other, it's sort of a dark satire of the limited / predetermined cycle of "real" life. (I guess depending on one's beliefs). - I tend to think unplanned short durations don't fall into this category. In a way, they indicate "failures" or untimely demises. This principle seems more powerful when it is done intentionally (like in the example of SnapChat).