Liebes-Lied

Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß
sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie
hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen?
Ach gerne möchte ich sie bei irgendetwas
Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen
an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die
nicht weiterschwingt, wenn diene Tiefen schwingen.
Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,
nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,
die aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.
Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?
Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand?
O süßes Lied.

- Rainer Maria Rilke 

Love Song

How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
it does not touch yours? How shall I lift
it gently up over you on to other things?
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark,
in some quiet, unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.
And yet everything which touches us, you and me,
takes us together like a single bow,
drawing out from two strings but one voice.
On which instrument are we strung?
And which violinist holds us in his hand?
O sweetest of songs.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

one thing about staying at my uncle’s is that there is cable tv. i usually don’t watch tv, but for the past week or so, i’ve been mildly hooked on a few programs, all on national geographic channel.

one of them is ‘long way down‘. ewan mcgregor goes from scotland to cape town on a motorbike. ’nuff said.

another is ‘don’t tell my mother‘. what caught my eye first was the premise of the show - the host,  Diego Buñuel, visits countries that in general are discouraged to visit. i started with watching the one where he is in democratic republic of congo. i was a little wary about truly liking the show; i mean, it’s interesting, and he’s shedding some light to places and societies that are more or less unknown, but there is still a tendency towards exoticism that i’m not quite comfortable with.

then i found out that he is the grandson of Luis Buñuel. and now i like him so much more. other than the fact that he is a cutiepie.

the last program i’ve been watching is tribal odyssey. again, i feel really uncomfortable with watching ‘primitive’ people through a documentary of this sort… and again, i’m rather fascinated by what i see. feeling very ambiguous.

so yes. national geographic beats beijing olympics anytime. the lesser of two evils.

i have to say. having used the same old phone for the past six years or so, i am really liking my new SE G900. it’s spiffy, with an interactive touchpad, but still with buttons that i can push and that light up to my delight (i can’t deal with phones that have no buttons and only one big screen - i am mentally incapable of not having buttons to push; besides, they are so counter-intuitive).

one great thing about this phone is that it is so user-friendly; it’s a great blend of touchpad and buttons, all based on human intuition. of course, i was uberexcited when i realised that the camera phone has the same 5.0 megapixel capacity as my canon ixus dcam.

i have finally tried it out. here are the results:

typhooning on our porch

day view from hung hom

night view from hung hom

typhoon no.9 view

i had a great opportunity to test out the yellows and the reds with this bowl  of noodles my dad made me

one day i had to catch the first train on the subway to get to work. this was at 6:04am. at any other time of the day, tsim sha tsui station is packed full of people

the view from sassoon rd, pokfulam. this is outside the department of chinese medicine research center in hku

so i am really quite satisfied with my new toy. another thing i really like about it is that it’s black and slick, with a torch! i’ve always wanted a torch for my phone…

there is definitely a certain aesthetic to pictures taken with phone cameras though. perhaps the slightly blurry quality, the slightly drained out colours, or the shallow depth of field. the only way i can think of to describe it is that it has a ‘haruki murakami tendency’.

love is obviously an enormous topic to attempt - but during this past month of distress at home, i have a few things i’d like to express.

i spent the past 23 years watching one of the greatest love stories unfold. while there were, of course, the usual arguments that everyone has, i have always had an incredibly loving family. watching my parents during the past month or so, i have learned a few things about what it means to truly love.

one of the most deciding elements, while we’re still young, is physical attraction. unfortunately, no matter how we try to believe otherwise, people are shallow. good looking people have an advantage, no matter how we try to persuade ourselves that “it’s what is inside that counts”. in fact, when speaking of love, we almost avoid this issue of physical attractiveness - it has been consciously downplayed, intentionally overlooked. we are embarrassed by this shallow quality, and we avoid it, as if trying to ignore this fact will make the world a better place.

we’re animals.

but i guess animals like decent company too, i’m not trying to ignore what is more than skin deep. so what happens when we’re old and flabby and sagging? here comes all the other elements: personality. compatibility. sharing the same interests and attitudes. having similar world views - if not similar, then at least the ability to empathize and understand the other’s stance.

and on deeper level: honesty. what is honesty? i believe that we should always be honest with one another, but there is always a point where honesty does more harm than good - then perhaps its better to just let it slip. where is this point? that’s for ourselves to decide. honesty, i believe, is overrated; it shouldn’t be treated as some strict rule to follow, but it should be practiced as much as possible, tactfully. where does the tact come from? maturity.

then there’s trust. that goes hand in hand with honesty, along with ’sense of security’. this one’s hard - there might not be a sense of security even if the other person has been totally honest. and there might be trust, but a weak sense of security. i haven’t been able to figure this one out yet. all i know is that, perhaps because i am a female being, having sense of security is one of the major things that give me comfort, and that i look for in a partner.

all these, amongst many other elements, constitute a strong connection with your significant other. however, watching my parents grapple with our difficult family situation, there is question that stands out the most:

is the one you love willing to be responsible for your happiness?

here’s an upcoming exhibition in berlin that i would love to see:

MEGASTRUCTURE RELOADED

“The exhibition is not intended as a documentary representation; instead the megastructuralists are to be tested for their currency and relevance for the problems of contemporary urban design and mega cities. We will focus on the connection between architecture and visual art, as well as on actual architectonic and urban-design issues.”

it is the second installment of a larger project, Utopia Revisited. unfortunately, i missed the previous exhibition, IDEAL CITY - INVISIBLE CITIES, as well.

those who know my work know that i am obsessed with thinking about cities. while i love my chosen field of study, fine arts, i often feel it’s not enough; more often than not i am looking at architectural theory and urban design for inspiration. i suppose this is what interdisciplinary practice is; i only wish that there was a bit more structure, and loads more time.

on second thought; do i want more structure? structure certainly gives a practice more stability; an ‘organized and clearly thought out plan’ almost always justifies any sort of work or study. there are syllabuses; assigned readings; lesson plans; sketchbooks and records and schedules; enough organizational backbone that you have to take it seriously. but - why can’t there just be a discipline where we work on a whim? we do what we do, we follow our gut instincts and intuition; there are no plans, but merely a scholarly pursuit based entirely on powers of association, on whatever your curiosity and interests lead you. why does there need to be logic, and the illusion of organization for an intelligent investigation to be taken seriously?

i am obviously very fed up with proposals.

like many people i know, i prefer keeping private life separate from work life. keep them separate, make sure they don’t bleed into each other, for the sake of sanity. no emotional obligations for work, no professional paranoia at home.

however, things are starting to blur.

i have been given permission to work from home for the time being. i still teach, but that’s the only time when i am in the office. the rest of the time, i work, sitting at the kitchen table, or sitting in my bed.

currently, im looking out the window and watching big cargo ships go by, and marking papers. i’ve been back in hong kong for nearly two months now, and everything still feels surreal. and i imagine it will stay this way indefinitely.

obviously i know there is a time and place for everything. and right now is not the time for me to focus on my career, but rather on my family. but i can’t help but feel like time is running out; which is ridiculous, because i’m still young, and if anything, what i have is time.

then why is it that i feel like life is leaving me behind? reading articles in weekly magazines, talking to friends in philly, hearing about the activities within the hong kong arts scene, there’s so much out there to do, so many challenges to take on, before i can even be remotely close to what i want to be. i’ve always been the sort of person who never sat around doing nothing, and this sort of initiative has gotten me to some amazing places. clearly i know that im not doing nothing at the moment - perhaps what im doing now is the most important thing i’ll ever do. but i cant help but feel deprived. and that, indeed, is a very selfish thought. one that can no longer be suppressed, but that i need to face.

currently staying at my uncle’s in hung hom. there is a massive sea view here. i only wish that we could afford to appreciate it.

this article is really rather interesting. Males, using his background in mechanical engineering, created an art piece that quite clearly illustrates the patterns of surveillance by cctv cameras… that they are actually technologically advanced enough to detect the colour of people’s skin. the implications are quite disturbing, as he was able to expose the potentials of these cameras for some extreme ethnic profiling. but how do you interpret something like 90.3% black?

CCTV camera identifies people by race

The eye of tech-artist Benjamin Males’ custom-made surveillance camera is engineered for a black and white world.

Black and white people, that is.

Males, 25, a mechanical engineer who recently graduated with a master’s degree from London’s Royal College of Art, wrote the software for a camera that determines a person’s race.

The RTS-2 (Racial Targeting System) is essentially an automated racial-profiling tool, one that governments and police have not dared touch due to privacy and human-rights concerns, even though the technical capabilities already exist.

However, Males built the camera in an attempt to raise awareness of such issues among the public, which often appears oblivious to how frequently it is surveyed by CCTV (closed-circuit television) due to the prevalence of the cameras, especially in the U.K.

Surveillance cameras “have a significant effect on our lives and civil liberties,” Males said. “We, as the public, aren’t really in a position to discuss them or critique them because they are developed behind closed doors.”

Males bought the CCTV camera on eBay’s auction site. He wrote the software for the program in C++, in part using the Open Source Computer Vision Library from Intel, a library of programming functions that can be used in applications where computers use vision.

Males built a motor for the camera, so when it detects a face, it moves as the person does. Males intended that people who are targeted by the camera have some indication they’re being monitored.

The camera supplies an image of a person’s face via a USB (Universal Serial Bus) cable to a laptop. The software then takes a color sample of a person’s nose and cheeks, and the pixel values are averaged to come up with an approximate determination of the person’s race, Males said. The output is shown as a percentage, such as 90.3 percent white, 9.7 percent black. Those percentages are a mathematical representation of the way a person’s skin has been sampled and classified by the computer.

All of the RTS-2’s components run on batteries, and the setup is portable. Males has taken it to places such as Covent Garden and Kensington High Street in London, both areas busy with tourists and shoppers. Nearly every one who passed by either didn’t notice the camera or barely paid attention, a finding that shows how people are quite used to being monitored, Males said.

Males later mashed the color samples from people’s faces together into one big color swatch, creating a collage of the skin tones seen in a neighborhood. The London neighborhood of Brixton - the scene of violent race riots in 1981 - was “very brown and quite white.” The collage for Kensington High Street, an affluent area in the West End, showed “rich oranges and terracotta,” Males said.

Males has also displayed the RTS-2 in Japan and at London’s Royal College of Art as an art installation called “The Target Project.”

When the device is displayed in a more controlled environment, people are more curious. Males said he was asked why he would create a racial classification device and what he would do if a government asked him to develop the system further.

The second question is irrelevant: The technology already exists, and it’s much more refined, Males said.

“The device isn’t that sophisticated,” Males said. “This software exists at a much more sophisticated and dangerous level in the commercial world. You can buy facial-recognition technology that looks at features and tries to match people.”

But using automated tools such as CCTV to target people by race raises questions about ethnic profiling, which some experts argue puts a person’s race as a forefront consideration in wrongdoing, even before suspicious actions have been observed.

After the July 2005 terrorist bombings in London, many Asians complained of increased police scrutiny and aggression in their communities, merely since some attackers were Asian. The issue caused heightened tensions between Asians and police, which could have potentially hurt the police’s chance to collect valuable intelligence from sources within those communities.

“Personally, I think there’s a place for these kinds of technologies,” Males said. “Technology has a role to play in our security and safety, but there needs to be proper discussion. There needs to be a bit more openness.”

-networkworld.com

i got my categories back, after much twiddling with wordpress php. i am not a coder, but thank goodness for internet forums, i am starting to get the hang of it. this is precisely how i picked up html a few years ago.

anyways. not everything goes well though, when it comes to trial and error. i have thus lost all my blogroll links. i guess that’s not a big deal though, i can add those back easily (or so i hope).

typhoon 8 officially over, back to work tomorrow…