Friday, January 30, 2009

RO ON RUPTURED SPACE – 4

MÉTHODE CHAMPENOISE

The Drink of Kings, the King of Drink

Ruptured Space?! How does Champagne link?

Sediments formed over the passage of time

Float like muddled aspirations through the pale-gold wine

They coast along the curves of an upside-down bottle

Bursting with effervescence at full throttle

They settle at the neck and freeze into a plug

Which is then disgorged with an explosive tug

The tiniest of bubbles start rising up

When this golden liquid fills the cup

As we hold the stem and lift the flute

To joie de vivre, with this refined brut

’tis Rupture’s hand that makes this wine

So unbelievably divine

Thursday, January 29, 2009

RO ON RUPTURED SPACE – 3

RUPTURE’S RAPTURES

Adam asks: “Indeed, is the violent rupturing of space a part of what it means to be alive, to be human?”

The repercussions of ruptured space need not always be negative, violent, or invasive.

Rupture could be found in the poetry of the French kiss, or the romantic rhapsody that ensues. A carnal captivity of body that at once releases mind. A death of sorts that creates life. Whereupon birth itself would be another of Rupture's displays.

Envision the shattering of shell by a helpless baby bird that emerges from the cracked egg, its endearing down all moist and ruffled.

Rupture is wondrous, indeed, when that skillful slit removes a malignancy with unerring precision, or ultrasound waves fragment kidney stones to shards, or the quotidian needle punctures the skin – granting another day to live.

Why, women’s legs wouldn’t be quite so baby-soft or men’s chests as beach-ready, were it not for the ripping rupture of hot wax.

Split a passion fruit, a mangosteen, a longan or a rambutan, and devour its tropical succulence as its juicy stickiness dabs your mouth. That’s rupture.

Rupture’s hand breaks oven-baked bread, fragrant and crusty, at Dinner's table.

Rupture would also be a new government at work, pulling out conservative edicts and injunctions. Maybe with a directive to shut down a detention camp at Guantánamo Bay – ending forever the physical and emotional rupture of inquisition.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

BEN & RO ON RUPTURED SPACE

“SANCTIONED VIOLENCE”

Punches and kicks, fist-to-fist face-offs, nasty injuries and “finishing people off” are the way things usually go in the ruptured space of combat sports. So why do fight fans really want that rupture in this space, aka “great fights”? What really makes this arena so juicy and compelling? An interview with an ardent MMA fan throws some light on Adam’s question: “Indeed, is the violent rupturing of space a part of what it means to be alive, to be human?”

Perhaps this ruptured space isn’t really about rupture, after all.

Ro: So what do you like about MMA?

Ben: I like the athleticism. You have to be so skilled at so many different things.... boxing, juijitsu, wrestling, submissions, thai boxing... and they put themselves through intense training, and 50% of it is mental training.”

Ro: What really fascinates you?

Ben: So you have these two guys who are skilled in all these things... two warriors... and they go head-to-head and square off. Whoever wins is usually smarter, or has the mental training not to give up. it’s like a physical chess match.”

Ro: What about blood and that sort of thing?

Ben: Umm. I don't like it but I don’t mind it; it excites me because sometimes a guy will get cut, and bleed like crazy but he keeps going... to me, to able to do that you need to be at a pretty strong place mentally – so when I see a guy doing that, yes it excites me... but not because of the blood, because of the resilience.

So the most dominant MMA fighter in the world, he's undefeated.... Fedor Emilienenko is his name. He was fighting a guy named Kevin Randleman a few years ago.

Kevin Randleman picked up Fedor, tossed him backwards and slammed him down on his neck and head. It looked brutal, like a broken neck or something, but because of Fedor’s mental training, he learned to relax in the ring. So as he was in mid air, he completely relaxed his body and when he landed, his body just absorbed the blow. He got right up, and got Kevin Randleman in an arm lock called a “keylock”. Randleman gave up and Fedor won.

It was one of the most amazing things in MMA history and it was all from intense resilience and mental strength and training. Like, if that were me being thrown i would have locked up and probably broken my neck.

Ro: So if it’s all about mental strength, why does it have to manifest itself physically?

Ben: It’s the combination of brain and brawn, really. But the physical part is what we all grow to love about it. It’s amazing to see these guys try to edge each other out physically… with split second timing and holds and strategy.

Watch the rupture.

ADAM K ON RUPTURED SPACE

“THREE CHEERS FOR RUPTURED SPACE!”

At the end of The Italian Incident, Rohini asks us to consider this space in an academic fashion. Instead of focusing solely on the specifics of the incident and its outcome, my mind takes me to the blog heading under which the posting resides and formulates an ancillary sort of uber question: What constitutes a Ruptured Space?

In trying to answer this question, my Yin-Yang mind first seeks to locate and identify a space that could be considered as the opposite of a ruptured space: some sort of a priori state of relative peace, tranquility or harmony. The operative word or concept here is “relative”, since it could be argued that on some level (at the subatomic level, for instance) there is always some degree of rupturing going on in any given space.

Unable to identify or perhaps justify the existence of an absolute non-ruptured space, my mind turns away from the presupposed to the more predictable – to some sort of aggressive or violent action that is typically linked, in a causal sense, to a space being ruptured. Rohini’s throwing of the wine glass is a good case in point. But here again, I end up with only a relative understanding, which is confirmed by the set of questions she asks at the end, “Whose space was ruptured? His or ours?”

Frustrated, but not daunted by my (admittedly) mental limitations, I double back to my original question, and to my surprise, discover an interesting aspect to this whole ruptured-space thing.

The image of an empty boxing ring appears. Viewed from above, I see a space that is pure in color and design in what might be considered its a priori state. Then, the fury of combatants, fists flying with a flurry of aggression and violence, ruptures the wholesomeness and harmony of this pure white square image. I begin to wonder is this the anthropomorphic manifestation of the subatomic nature of things? A sort of sanctioned violence, where the rupturing of space is cultivated, even honored? I start to tick of off other similar spaces. The running of the bulls in San Fermin. The collective tomato fight in Bunyol. The gridiron on Superbowl Sunday. Indeed, is the violent rupturing of space a part of what it means to be alive, to be human?

Perhaps Elvis Costello said it best, “What’s so good about peace, love and understanding?”

RO ON RUPTURED SPACE - 2

THE AWAKENING

She’d burst into the room; wake me up with a hullabaloo. She’d say, “Get up, my sweet”, her voice cheerful, like birdsong. Then she’d go across to the window, and tear the curtains open to allow the golden sunshine to drench the room.

Then, she’d leave my bedroom door ajar and go back into the kitchen. I’d hear the din of domesticity, the clang and clamor of steel vessels, the chitchat with the kitchen help, her poignant stotras to the Gods. Strains of the “Vishnu Sahasranama” – a mantra that evokes Vishnu, the Preserver, with a thousand names – would stream in. She had a voice like a nightingale, she did, my mother.

But what a delicious wake-up! How fortunate is one to wake to a mother – and her love – every morning!

Strangely, not so for me.

For an extremely sensory and sensitive type of personality, this would be an ice-cold shock every morning. It would rip me out of slumberous stupor; yank me from the inmost layers of consciousness; drag me out of deep, drowsy dormancy. Basically, ruin the start to my day.

This went on for years; my mother’s love, care and concern showering me… in ways other than just being woken up.

Then, one day I moved away to a magic faraway land called “Singapore”, where I was answerable only to myself. At first, I was uncomfortable with the quietude, but began to understand who I was, what I wanted, even how I needed to wake up.

Consciousness is so much like Nature. It needs to dawn tentatively like the sky – from dark to opaque, translucent to transparent, shade to tint. It needs to stretch languorously like the long, lazy, limbs of a pale-gold sun. It needs to unfurl slowly like petals on a dewy early-morning flower.

Sometimes, during such times of luxurious leisure, thoughts flutter in.

Thoughts of the empty nest I perhaps left ruptured when I took flight.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

RO ON RUPTURED SPACE - 1

THE ITALIAN INCIDENT

The scene: a neighborhood Italian restaurant. The act: Owner thumps fist on table, and yells at waiter for not re-filling Vedant's glass with wine.

The fireworks escalate, making our meal extremely uncomfortable. I push my plate away, we ask for the cheque. The angry hissing and cursing continues. Since it’s over our wine glass, I feel it my moral obligation to defend our poor waiter, who is so shaken that he puts his sleeve into my pasta while placing a spoon; but it doesn’t matter, I can’t eat it anyway.

I’m not drinking the wine. I’m drinking Panna, which I also push away because I feel it go bad with negative energy. So you can say I’m not drinking at all.

I go up to the bar to tell the owner very nicely that he should go easy on the waiter, that it’s not his fault, that our evening has less than bearable. He smiles and shrugs his shoulders, but I hold his eyes like a leash, not letting him drop the gaze. He appears to calm down, and says, with a gruff Italian drawl, "Senora, I'm Italian, I am like this for fifty years, you can't change me.".

I don't know what comes over me the next moment. I note rather cold-bloodedly that I’m not really angry.

So I reply with utter calm, "Do you want to see how Italian I can be?”. Before he can respond, I pick up a Martini glass that has been filled to the brim with water and ice, hurl it towards the corner of the bar, and watch it smash into smithereens.

Then I walk away leaving them frozen in the numb aftermath of slow shock. Vedant follows me in a stupor. The scene I leave behind is vaguely reminiscent me of some fairy tale I’d read as a kid where the whole village is turned to stone in time – the seamstress captive while drawing a thread, the woodman petrified midway through chopping a block of wood. Only, the gentleman at the next table is frozen in action while twirling his spaghetti, his mouth open.

As I walk, wild thoughts crowd my head. Maybe the mafia is waiting outside to run over me, or maim me, or do something equally dreadful. Now that he has Vedant's name on the credit card, and my face is crisp in his memory given that I glued his gaze to mine, it’s going to be horrible, horrible.

What do I do? Flee the country - a little earlier than I'd planned on? Or am I being over-reactive? Obviously, I don't have the attitude to follow-through, or the physical muscle to handle the repercussions.

But let's discuss this incident on a purely academic note.

Whose space was ruptured?

His or ours?

Monday, January 12, 2009

ADAM ON SPACE ON THE NOSE

A NOSE FOR MEMORY

Of all the senses, smell is the most powerfully linked one to memory. Perhaps it’s because part of the faculty for this sense occupies a space that’s considered to be the oldest or most primal region of the brain?

Certainly, our oldest memories, particularly those of childhood, seem to be most easily triggered by the smells they are linked to ⎯ from the subtle and sublime scent of a mother’s embrace (as ubiquitous as it is unique), to the delicious and delightful aroma of a freshly baked pie (a sort of archetypical smell of childhood in Western societies).

For the most part, the smells of childhood are created outside of our control. But at some point in our development, we shift from being passive receptors of smells, and become more actively involved in creating and choosing them. In this respect, through the use of smell, we become what might be called “memory makers”; some of us more consciously so than others.

I’m watching this take place right now with my teenage daughter. She’s taken it upon herself to change the brand of laundry detergent that we’ve been using in our home for many years. Interestingly, the first articles that she’s chosen for receiving this new scent are her bed sheets, pillowcases and comforter cover. (A space that’s begging to be explored.) Changing the laundry detergent seems to be an attempt on her part to use smell to mark a “space” that’s a departure from the past, as well as an arrival of a memory now set for the future.

What memories have you made lately? Or rather, smelled anything good lately?

Saturday, January 10, 2009

RO ON SPACE ON THE NOSE - 3

COFFEE & BAGELS

It's Friday morning. I sit in a corner office on the 14th Floor of a Madison Avenue advertising agency, working on Microsoft. I bite into an Onion Bagel, bluntly cut with a plastic knife and schmeared with spring onion cream cheese. As the aroma of coffee wafts from the kitchen across the corridor, emotions wash me in different flavors; most of them are chicory-bitter, and a very few, sweet. I’m immediately transported to a Friday morning some ten odd years ago.

The cluster of downtown San Fran’s grey-brown buildings, kafkaesque, darkens my moving vision. The grating wheels of the cable car make auditory furrows upon the nerves of my teeth. A cold lonely wind wraps me in its arms and clings to me; when I embrace it back, it slaps me on the face.

In these few seconds, I am acutely aware of how outcast I was all those years, the embers of my spirit stubbed out by that apparently refined, non-smoking society. I think of what I left behind – a civilized prison that went to great lengths to pretend not to be one, in a culture outwardly refined and accepting and respectful of difference, but hiding its hypocritical ugly face under a beautiful, smiling, subtle mask of discrimination.

I thought I’d forgotten it, forgiven it, but it emerges from under the layered years of denial, popping up in the foreground like an expanded window on my Mac.

I no longer feel the ice-blue resentment against that clique; I was never a part of it anyway, and now, in a rear-view rush of gratitude, I know I will never be. That brand of exile no longer has the power to terrify me like it did, perhaps because I don’t look for mirrors to reflect my identity, or even my existence, any more. I’ve learnt to bite it back like I do every winter in New York.

San Francisco, you bitchcold city. But I must be a little kinder to you, you helped me become who I am today.

I sit on the 21st Floor of 135 Main Street. Swanlike ships glide under the Bay Bridge, leaving frothy white trails on an intense blue Pacific. I stare at my Mac, so grateful to be finally accepted.

A man with the grey beard sits cross-legged like a technological mystic, talking Microsoft on the carpet everyone has tread upon with their shoes, ruffling my cultural obsessive-compulsive sensibilities ever so little. Ah, he smokes, which makes him less civilized then. A narrow brown woman, softly scornful and unobvious in her beauty, flashes me a smile as she walks up the stairs to finish her strategy document.

There are others who make little impact on me, all with that cookie-cutter question-mark intonation, that same, pale, manufactured look, perhaps their only raison d’etre to please the mammoth, swallowing corporate powers-that-be.

A bus beeps – that same beep I have heard so often on Howard Street. The smells of Starbucks on California Street whisper memories into my nostrils again, and the late September air, with a little shiver in it, wipes in vignettes of Embarcadero Center and the howling fog around.

The honking of enraged New York traffic wakes me up to a new reality.

Everything is the same, yet everything is different. I'm still working on Microsoft, but I’m Ro, the New Yorker.

And my ultimate acceptance is only by myself.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

RO ON SPACE ON THE NOSE – 2

CHERRY BLOSSOMS

When Spring beckons with silver-throated birds, Nature crafts a paintbrush from the soft fibers of wispy clouds. She wets the brush with the sky's joyous tears, and sweeps the landscape with even, flat strokes. Then, she dabs the pointy tip into the colors of the earth and all its muds and silts and soils, to dot the just-moistened landscape. Innocent white petals blush modestly with delicate daubs of rose and fuchsia; some turn mauve and lavender, others peachy salmon, misty yellow and coppery brown.

How else would Cherry Blossoms in Japan come to be?

Beauty in its intensity can be almost unbearable to the eye; in this case, it is apparently unbearable to the Nose – at least for some – when pollen is sprinkled into the air like fairy dust.

And so the Japanese Face Mask comes to be.

Perhaps no other culture knows to draw spatial boundaries around the nose as does Japan’s. Like everything else, the reasons are many-nuanced. Sometimes, they also stem from an innate consciousness etched into the culture from as long as time can remember. It’s the consciousness of a collective society, one with deep respect for another’s olfactory border. Reasons for such consideration for one's companions? A cold, a viral, a flu, a sneeze. All of which teem with more germs than the letters on this page – scrolled down.

In a culture that’s also detail-oriented, perfectionist and conscientious about going to work every day – come rain, shine or cherry blossom – a common cold isn’t reason enough to shirk the necessary responsibility.

And so they don the mask.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

ADRIAN ON SPACE & SOUND

SOUND IN ONLINE SPACE

This past year a couple of programs on echo-location grabbed my attention. First was this: the story of a boy who lost his eyes very early yet who has taught himself to "see" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBv79LKfMt4) well enough to skateboard, play basketball and have a fairly average childhood by using "clicking" sounds. If you haven't seen this, I'd spare the time. It is absolutely awe-inspiring and also very emotional too.

Second was the recent Nat Geo program on echo-location which claimed that humans have echo-location ability equal to that of dolphins, or better than bats!

Like any good marketer this news of newly discovered and untapped human potential and promise got me wondering how we could exploit and integrate sound better into what we do. Actually I'm not quite that sad, my friend Rohini asked me to write a companion piece to hers and Adam’s for her blog.

Quite a bit has been written about how companies are using mnemonic cues in their advertising and retail environments, but one still untapped opportunity is the Web. If you think of sound on the Web it's probably in conjunction with unfortunately chosen intro music for some cheesy site. That along with the various boings, chirps, rocket noises, door slams, swooshes and tweets of many modern applications has probably forced your default mode to mute. However, I think the echo-location metaphor proves that there is a different way to think about sound on the Web - as a navigation tool.

For example, volume levels could be used to indicate relative depth or distance from you - useful in the event of working with multiple windows in multiple layers. Tones could guide mouse movements, subtly reinforcing desired actions or warning about potentially dangerous ones. In the same way that a car gives audio cues about operation, when to shift, whether everything is working well or not, etc. I think it's pretty easy to see how sound – and a standard for sound – could be quite useful in a next-generation navigation scheme.

It's interesting to speculate on how many of the current computing idioms evolved to compensate (either consciously or not) for the lack of sound. Now that our hardware is capable, can sound transform how we use technology?

[ This is a contribution from Adrian Ho, a partner at Zeus Jones. http://www.zeusjones.com/ ]

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

GUY ON SPACE ON THE NOSE

JOURNEYSCENT

Taking my daily commute, I follow my nose’s sensations along the way.

The scents in the hallway outside my door are simple: old carpet and dried paint. Flat and persistent, they crowd me from behind, shooting me forward like a pea through a straw, down the stairs and out the door.

Outside are a thousand scents, churning, traveling, growing and dissipating, as if I’ve discovered a new frontier. Exploration beckons, but as a dutiful worker I glide toward the subway instead.

I turn downhill after passing the last building on the block, and riding the wind, the scent of the sea hits me, faint but pervasive. It transmits the essence of that broad flat expanse of blue, miles away.

In the subway, the attacking scent of acrid burnt metal cuts an endless gash through my mind, like the tracks that run for miles from the city center to the land’s end.

In my office, the mix of dry, monotonous, faintest odors (must; bleached paper; alcohol-tinged equipment and floors; baked and cooled air ducts) presses me gently down into my chair.

  • Simple, flat scents = a long, directional tube
  • Millions of churning scents = a wide, dark, uneven surface
  • Faint but pervasive smell = broad, flat expanse
  • Metallic, cutting smell = a long slit
  • Faint mixes of monotones = low overhead

What spaces do other kinds of scents convey?

Sunday, January 04, 2009

RO ON SPACE ON THE NOSE - 1

THE PRINCESS AND THE P

Why is reward linked to hard work, and in this case, punishment?

My journey to The Land of Fragrances & Flavors, Scents & Spices – the land of Jasmine & Jackfruit, Orchid & Lychee, Frangipani & Mango, Rice & Pandan Leaf – is always fraught with olfactory ordeals.

On the aircraft, the apparatus placed by the creator at the center of my face quivers at sharing space with so many breathing, coughing, sneezing, spluttering, sniffing, oozing, emitting, expelling, discharging beings called “humans”. My Nose is very challenged, despite Singapore Airlines’ clever attempt at Sensory Branding, with a patented scent that is melded into the perfume of flight attendants, blended into the hot towels they offer before take-off, and imbued into the brand itself – a smooth, sensual, seductive, sexy scent that is “exotically Asian, with a distinct aura of the feminine.”

Exotically Asian, my foot. For my Nose, it is a journey of extreme hardship, of the intense suffering of its sensibilities, of penitence to be paid, of abstinence even, as it cries out to my lungs to stop demanding air.

For over 20 hours, my Nose is pummeled with the smell of international travel – a motley mix of the fermemted stench of baggage, of never-washed upholstery, of reheated airline meals, of unkempt passengers, of unwashed armpits, of un-flossed crevices, of masking perfumes which only enhance underlying notes.

Even in Business or First, it is much the same – if only less intense.

Perhaps no other sense is as invaded and infringed, penetrated and pervaded, abused and assaulted, raided and ravaged, as is the Space on My Nose.

The ordeal is finally over. I am soaring in a taxi redolent of Pandan Leaf and Jasmine Rice. I roll down the window like a dog hungry for new smells.

The scents of Singapore wash out my brain of all its recent traumas. The air, purified clean with Nature’s own hand – a tropical thunderstorm – carries many a pious offering to my nose.

An offering of Buddhist temple incense, the fragrance of fresh rain upon sun-scorched earth, the whiff of fresh-mowed grass, the clean smell of rainforest tree bark, and the exotic scent of orchids.

The real journey is about to begin.

Friday, January 02, 2009

ADAM K ON SPACE & SOUND – 2

BRANDED SPACE

When I think of “sounds of brands” my mind turns to spaces (not necessarily to mechanized products) that advertisers appropriate through the use of sound to help build their own brands. In effect, creating a “branded space” in the consumer’s mindset.

One of the best examples this is a Southwest Airlines television campaign, which first appeared on the airwaves (another space to explore at some point) a few years back. The sound is that of the “ding” that fills the cabin a few minutes after take off. I believe the sound is used to single that it’s okay for a passenger to get out of their seat and move about the cabin. The campaign’s themeline “You are free to move around the country”, which is delivered in the same fashion (audio quality) of a pilot’s announcement over the airplane’s PA system seems to support my understanding of the usage or the significance of this sound.

BTW: The term in advertising for this kind of device (the “ding”) is called a mnemonic.

What’s important to recognize is that this sound is not unique to Southwest’s jets, or the specific brand experience of this airline. The sound is created equally (so-to-speak) by all the different airlines and (I believe) is an industry standard used by all the different manufacturers of passenger jets (e.g. Boeing and Airbus). In this respect, the sound can be considered as ubiquitous to airline travel.

The smarts of the Southwest folks and their agency is to take ownership of the sound and link it to the Southwest brand, enabling the brand to be filled with many compelling associations and feelings about airline travel – all of which can be said to “take off” and “land” in the area of personal empowerment.