junho 20, 2004

junho 12, 2004

CONAN, the boy in the Future by Hayao Miyazaki (1978)

It's amazing how Miyazaki has been present since my infancy in my life. I had 4 years when he made this fabulous TV series. I saw it only when I was about 8 and since then i never forgot it.

Conan produced and huge memory mark in me. In the sunny days when I'm relaxed and have time to look at my infancy it's hard to avoid the Conan feelings. Visuals, music, voices, character movement, the apocalyptic scenario, Conan happiness with the little things, the loneliness.

Today when i look at a movie like "Spirited Away" i just feel this as to come from the same genius mind.

I came to the conclusion that "ICO" in some way, used some of these artistic atmospheres from Conan and that's maybe one of the reasons for ICO having touched me so profoundly.

junho 05, 2004

Sex, Technology, Storytelling and Emotions


Today "Wired for Sex" [1] was about the new tech sex toys for the elicitation of human orgasms, male or female. Products are getting better and better in touch/sense simulation, but the interviewed people were not yet satisfied. They said they could get orgasms but they don't get their sex needs, completely fulfilled. They didn't come to feel the intensity they await from a normal sex relation.

The real problem I'm seeing for technological sex is the same I see for digital storytelling. Human Emotions.

Everybody that has experienced sex with a stranger knows that the only thing he gets from that act is the orgasm deprived of feelings.

If you don't care about the other being you'll never get the top climax that a sex relation can provide.

In sex you need to feel that there's another being there. Besides the one and only "love" feeling that is so vast and difficult to define we can talk about the self-esteem. To get in a sex relation you need the sexual organs from your opposite [2], be it technological or in flesh but to feel it intense you need complicity, respect, admiration, etc. from the other being.

Feelings emanated from the other being will intensify the mechanical act, will elicit brain activity of self-esteem that bond with the act in itself will finally explode in a powerful outcome.

In a story is the same thing. If you don't come to care, feel angry, sorrow or happiness about the characters in the story, you'll never feel the emotional intensity and so the feelings of the story will come to be boredom and a waste of time.

I believe that sex technology could be a very good framework to show the peculiarity of human sensations, the human need of the other. Relations.

So if we want to provide anything technological that can someday elicit emotional intensity we'll need to get to emotional machines, which in some way can reach a point of emotion simulation, illusionary enough to fool our mind.

[1] TV Docummentary: Episode 4 - VIRTUAL REALITY SEX
[2] hetro relation