Brenda's Interactive Art and Design Blog

Challenges

2009-05-30T13:48:00.000-07:00

I'm coming into the home stretch of my project this quarter. I've run into a couple of obstacles that haven't been resolved, but I guess this is just part of the process. While my shirt worked well with the USB hookup, I began running into some problems once I switched to the wireless Blue Smirf. Even though my computer picked up its signal, it didn't seem to be communicating with Max. At first I thought that maybe my battery wasn't charged enough, but then I spoke to someone doing a similar project and she said that she tried several different charged batteries and the Blue Smirf still wasn't working with the LilyPad. =( oO I sent a descripition of this delemma to LilyPad Queen Leah Buechley, so I'm hoping to hear back from her. She might be the only one who can solve this problem. Since this project necessitates wireleless movement, I am at a bit of a standstill until I can resolve this.

Project Update and To-Do List

2009-05-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

Well, it's getting to be crunch time. After a week of playing with electronics, I think I have a much better grasp on how to utilize them in my project. After a few attempts, I think I have chosen a good set-up for my interactive dance project. I am using the LilyPad Arduino Main Board with a LilyPad LiPower and Polymer Lithium Ion Batteries - 2000mAh as a power source. Also, I invested in a Bluetooth® Modem - BlueSMiRF Gold so that the set-up is wireless and can be worn easily by the dancers. Finally, I chose the Ultrasonic Range Finder - Maxbotix LV-EZ3 as my proximity sensor. Supposedly, the sensor provides very accurate readings of 0 to 255 inches (0 to 6.45m) in 1 inch increments with little or no dead zone. However, I am a little worried that the detection range in terms of width won't be great enough with this sensor. Apparently, Maxbotix is offering the EZ0, EZ1, EZ2, EZ3, and EZ4 with progressively narrower beam angles allowing the sensor to match the application. So, the sensor with the widest range with the EZo sensor. I might have to switch to this one. In addition to this challenge, I still have to figure out how to translate its readings in the Max patch so that the video/audio output will be artistically relevant. I mostly concerned with coordinating the sensor reading with the Max program. What will be easier and more enjoyable will be the creation of the corresponding videos. I am creating them in Flash with images created in Photoshop and sounds created with Garage Band (not the most sophisticated option, but I am a novice sound engineer and this seems to work well for now.) Wish me luck!!

To-Do:

1) Complete Flash videos and convert to QuickTime for Max output
2) Sew electronics onto a shirt with conductive thread (and puffy paint for insulation!)
3) Hook up electronics to my computer with BlueTooth and pray that my Max patch works

Project Update & To-Do List

2009-05-12T16:26:00.000-07:00

I will be finalizing my interactive dance project within the next couple of weeks, and I am working to bring together all the disparate parts. While the actual creative concept is clear in my head, the challenging part now is making everything cohesive. The following is a working list of the different tasks I need to accomplish (hopefully this week):

1) Start working with LilyPad and sensors
I finally picked up my LilyPad kit (which was on back order) and will get my hands on it in class tomorrow. Yay! The Deluxe Kit from SparkFun Electronics includes:

* LilyPad Accelerometer
* LilyPad Mainboard
* LilyPad Bright White LED
* LilyPad Button Board
* LilyPad Buzzer
* LilyPad Light Sensor
* LilyPad Power Supply
* LilyPad Temperature Sensor
* LilyPad Tri-Color LED
* LilyPad Vibration Motor
* FTDI Basic Breakout
* Mini USB Cable
* 1 spool of 234/34 Conductive Thread

2) Finalize sound and video clips
I've been working on sound and video clips that communicate my creative message. I am exploring the (dis)embodied feminine and the machine with homage to Donna Haraway. I'd like to finalize these clips ASAP so that I have time to fully get my head around the tech element of my project, which leads me to.....

3) Configure Max patch
I need to work with Max to make sure it communicates with the sensors and the video output in the appropriate fashion. This will probably be the most challenging piece for me.

4) Secure dance space
My friend recently opened a space in Highlands, Eliot Street Collective, and I will be using the studio for my project. I think it will lend the appropriate environment for dancing and filming.

Project Visualization: LilyPad Wearable Sensors

2009-05-04T08:27:00.001-07:00

Project Visualization: Sketches

2009-05-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

Project Visualization: Sounds Samples

2009-04-17T11:55:00.001-07:00

Harmony: OM - The Original Sound

OM, the sound of the Universe, the sound vibrating within each living thing. For the sound element of my project, I would like the dancers to come closer and closer to OM, the purest, most basic sound, as they approach each other. In their longing to connect, they are actually connecting to their own inner selves, their true essence, and they gain clarity through sound. As they move away from each other and their true essence, the noise becomes garbled, fuzzy, and chaotic. I have chosen to use industrial music to represent this quality of fragmentation.

Map Ten: Synchronicity in Nature & Dance

2009-04-17T11:54:00.001-07:00

Synchronicity

The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined as the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships that are not causal in nature. These relationships can manifest themselves as simultaneous occurences that are meaningfully related—the cause and the effect occur together.

Jung coined the word to describe what he called "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events." Jung variously described synchronicity as an "acausal connecting principle", "meaningful coincidence" and "acausal parallelism". It was a principle that Jung felt gave conclusive evidence for his concepts of archeptypes and the collective unconscious, in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlies the whole of human experience and history—social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. Events that happen which appear at first to be coincidence but are later found to be causally related are termed as "incoincident".

One of Jung's favourite quotes on synchronicity was from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll in which the White Queen says to Alice: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards".

In Nature

We see examples out synchronicity in nature so frequently that they seem ordinary. For example, look up into the sky and see how a flock of birds fly in formation. When they change direction, they all execute the same motions in sync. While they include hundreds of individuals, they move in harmony without an obvious leader. They never bump into each other. Physicists have been working for years to understand the properties that guide the movements of birds and so far they have been unsuccessful.

In Movement

Since I am basing my work this quarter on improvisational movement, I wanted to explore contact improv as a complex interactivity for the survey project. I am intrigued by the parallels between collective animal behavior/movement and contact improv dance, particularly as they both exhibit qualities of synchronicity. This is a concept that will inform my final project.

Not Until Now - "The film documents two dancers as they strive and sometimes struggle to create intimate connection both physically and emotionally. Using the form contact improvisation as their focus. The music, instrumental and skillfully composed, along with serene images of nature, set the stage for the dance to unfold."

What is Contact Improvisation?

This quote from Nancy Smith's Caught Falling: The Confluence of Contact Improvisation
explains well this complex interactivity:

"Contact Improvisation is a dance form, originated by American choreographer Steve Paxton in 1972, based on the communication between two or more moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia.

The body, in order to open to these sensations, must learn to release excess muscular tension and abandon a certain quality of willfulness to experience the natural flow of movement. Practice includes rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner.

Contact improvisations are spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic exchanges. Alertness is developed in order to work in an energetic state of physical disorientation, trusting in one’s basic survival instincts. It is a free play with balance, self-correcting the wrong moves and reinforcing the right ones, bringing forth a physical/emotional truth about a shared moment of movement that leaves the participants informed, centered, and enlivened."

Map Nine: Collective Animal Behavior & Simulations/Art

2009-04-15T07:24:00.003-07:00

Flocking is the collective motion of a large number of self-propelled entities and is a collective animal behavior exhibited by many living beings such as birds, fish, bacteria, and insects. It is considered an emergent behavior arising from simple rules that are followed by individuals and does not involve any central coordination. As a common demonstration of emergence and emergent behavior, it was first simulated on a computer in 1986 by Craig Reynolds with his simulation program, Boids. This program simulates simple agents (boids) that are allowed to move according to a set of basic rules. The result is akin to a flock of birds, a school of fish, or a swarm of insects.

The simplest mathematical models of animal aggregations generally instruct the individual animals to follow three rules:

1. Separation - avoid crowding neighbours (short range repulsion)
2. Alignment - steer towards average heading of neighbours
3. Cohesion - steer towards average position of neighbours (long range attraction)

With these three simple rules, the flock moves in an extremely realistic way, creating complex motion and interaction that would be extremely hard to create otherwise.

Collective Animal Behavior describes the coordinated behavior of large groups of similar animals and the emergent properties of these groups. Facets of this topic include the costs and benefits of group membership, the transfer of information across the group, the group decision-making process, and group locomotion and synchronization. Studying the principles of collective animal behavior has relevance to human engineering problems through the philosophy of biomimetics. For instance, determining the rules by which an individual animal navigates relative to its neighbors in a group can lead to advances in the deployment and control of groups of swimming or flying micro-robots such as UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles).

(From Wikipedia)

Map Eight: Visualizing Language

2009-04-15T07:24:00.001-07:00

My short investigation into word clouds led me to Wordle, a website that generates word clouds from text that you provide, giving greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. This sparked my curiosity regarding cultural texts and the prominence of certain words over others. This is a great mechanism for sifting out themes, uncovering like gems out of the silt. This digital visualization is useful in understanding the key messages in different texts, both popular and personal. On a large scale, popular texts, such as an inaugural speech, influence collective consciousness, so it is important to see the main ideas being relayed. On a personal level, it would be interesting to visualize your own private diary, or a paper that you wrote, and to see the main ideas that you are communicating either to yourself or others.

To create my first word cloud on this site, I entered my paper, Taking Back the Tech: Contemporary Applications of Cyberfeminist Practices Online, which explores the relevancy of cyberfeminism today. Dominant themes include technology, feminism, gender newness, and movement. The second word cloud is created from President Obama's inaugural speech. Dominant themes include the nation, newness, today, generation, less, common, power, economy, women, and the earth. Finally, I created a cloud based on my blog to glean themes for my final project.

Map Seven: Chakras & Dance

2009-04-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

Just as a musician must know the notes of his instrument without having to think about them so the music can flow from source to fingertips unimpeded, so should the dancer know the notes of her body so energy can flow through her as fast as she channels it.

The Chakras are thought to be spirals of light that bring energy into the body through specific energy centers. There are many energy centers within our body, but there are seven (7) major ones that most holistic health practitioners use. Chakra is a Sanskrit word that means "wheel of light". Dr Carl G Jung referred to the chakras as the "gateways of consciousness". Lying along the spine, each chakra has it's own purpose, association and connection. When the energy of each chakra is in balance with each other, we experience peace and health, indicating there is an even flow of energy through all the chakras. An imbalance at one point in the system will likely create an imbalance somewhere else. Each chakra relates to different parts of the body. Our three lower chakras, the Sex chakra, Hara and Solar plexus, through our feet connect us to the earth, our roots. Our three higher chakras, the Crown, Third eye and Throat chakra connect us to the energies of the sun and heaven, our wings. It is only natural to initiate both hands and both feet in order to connect to the earth and sky. The meeting of these energies create an inner dance.

Chakra Dance is described as a creative dance therapy which works by stimulating the body's seven major chakras (centres of spiritual power) through music and dance. Teacher Douglas Channing says chakra dance works in a similar way to yoga in that it creates energy flows through the body. There are no specific steps that you are doing, you are just guided by the music,'' he says. "Each type of music is resonating to each of the chakra's frequency. It's almost like a dynamic form of mediation.'' Chakra dance was developed eight years ago by an Australian, Natalie Southgate, who wanted to combine her work in psychology and chakra healing with her strong interest in dance.

Map Six: Digital Technology as Performance Partner

2009-04-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

As I develop my project, I want my understanding of the interactive art technology to keep up with my broader artistic conceptualization. Since this is one of my main objectives for the quarter, I've compiled a sketchbook of the technological possibilities for my project. A primary interactive piece of my project will be the measurement of proximity between dance partners and the translation of that distance into graphical/musical digital media. To execute this idea, I intend to utilize ultrasonic sensors in tandem with LilyPad Arduino technology. I found an example of digital dance art that utilizes such technology:

An installation made by CoMA Yorkshire(Contemporary Music-Making for Amateurs) using samples of extended gamelan techniques. The sounds are activated as the dancers trigger the Soundbeams' ultrasonic motion sensors. This was performance took place in York in May 2008.

Arduino - Physical computing/electronics toolkit for interactive objects and installations
Arduino is a physical computing platform based on a simple I/O board and a development environment that implements the Processing/Wiring language. Arduino can be used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or can be connected to software running on a computer (e.g., Adobe Flash, Processing, Max/MSP, Pure Data, SUperCollider). Currently shipping versions can be purchased pre-assembled; hardware design information is available for those who would like to assemble an Arduino by hand.

Max/MSP programming language for interactive media

Max is a graphical development environment for music and multimedia developed and maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling '74. During its 15 year history, it has been primarily used by composers, performers, software designers, researchers and artists for creating interactive software.

Processing (programming language) an open source project used for many interactive art projects
Processing is a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts and visual design communities, which aims to teach the basics of computer programming in a visual context, and to serve as the foundation for electronic sketchbooks. Processing has spawned another project, Wiring, which uses the Processing IDE together with a simplified version of the C programming language as a way to teach artists how to program microcontrollers. There are now two separate hardware projects, Wiring and Arduino, using the Wiring environment and language.

Map Five: Office Culture & Hyperconnectivity

2009-04-13T08:15:00.000-07:00

When I'm not being a digital media student, I spend my time in the confines of my office in Denver. The culture of my office is the product of hyper-connectivity: email, landlines, cell phones, intercoms, memos, snail mail, face to face meetings, etc., etc... Here is the irony: I find that despite all of the mechanisms that exist to facilitate communication, it is just these devices that often contribute to communication's disintegration. Everyone in my office sits in their individual offices the majority of the day, staring at their computer screens. It's almost as if their eyes become the screen, their hands become the keyboard and the mouse, their ears become the telephone... More often than not, email is the preferred method of communication. Sometimes, even when we're in the same building, we send emails to each other, rather than walk down the hallway to have an in-person interaction. Often, multiple recipients are "carbon copied" to our emails, making the exchange less personal, and sometimes, communication is redundant, messy, and misunderstandings or confusion ensue. At times, it evokes what Ms. Blackwell from TED Talks describes as "temes" or technological memes that have a life and will of their own, acting like parasites in humans and their communication processes.

I surveyed my co-workers to see, on average, how many different interactions they have at work in one day (emails, phone conversations, etc.) I created a word cloud based on the number of different types of interactions they had on an average day, making each word proportional to the number of times its corresponding communication was used. Unsurprisingly, emails dwarfs all other forms of communication. Intercom communication comes in second despite the fact that people in my office are able to speak face to face if they so desire. Snail mail is barely legible because it is used so infrequently, thus antiquating the paper communication trail.

It makes me wonder to what extent should we sacrifice face to face interactions in the name of expediency and convenience. In my experience, often a living breathing, in-person interaction can transmit more information in real time and conveys what can be lost in purely technological interaction: emotion, intonation, depth... This map is a reflection of my office's hyper-connectivity and how communicative prostheses are replacing human interaction.

Map Four: Dance & Interactive Performance Space

2009-04-12T12:48:00.001-07:00

For the my final project, I am interested in having dancers interact and influence the performance space. I have found examples of this work, where dancers dynamically change the stage on which they perform, both visually and auditorily with the use of sensors.

An interactive dance and media performance conceived and directed by Klaus Obermaier, in collaboration with the Ars Electronica Futurelab, featuring Desirée Kongerød and Matthew Smith. APPARITION takes interactive performance to another level through the creation of a unique stage work integrating live performance, sound, projection and an interactive system comprising real-time image generation and computer vision.
Computational processes that model and simulate real-world physics create a kinetic space where the beauty and dynamics of the human body and its movement quality are extended and transferred into the virtual world. These two main areas of research, the interactive digital system as performance partner and the creation of an immersive kinetic space, form the artistic framework for APPARITION.

The objective of this experiment was to provide dancers with a space in which to make music based on motion and color. I wanted dancers to be able to create their own music instead of dance to a preset track. This demonstration features a dance space in which dancers create patterns of music using different colored umbrellas. Through a video interface connected to a program I wrote, the space is sectioned into a 4x4 grid, making 16 empty patterns available for the dancers, each linked to a separate sound patch. These patterns vary in length and octave range. This essentially turns the dance space into a sound creation canvas. The dancers use colored umbrellas to "paint" this sound canvas with sound.

re(PER)curso shows that experience and meaning offer a continuous stream of interpretation and re-interpretation that can be deconstructed and reconstructed in different realities and dimensions. The performance combines art and technology. Narrative, music and dance will interact and fuse with real time synthetic music composition, video art, 3D computer graphics, animated characters and landscapes.

Map Three: Designing Social Connections

2009-04-11T21:42:00.001-07:00

"The Chart" on the series L Word maps out the social web of lesbians in Los Angeles. The character Alice keeps a running digital and paper log of each hookup within the lesbian community. It visualizes the interconnectivity of these women and shows just how closely linked they are to everyone else. I'm fascinated by this concept of illustrating a social phenomenon and the connections between people who share a common thread. The L Word show eventually created Our Chart (now inactive), a real life lesbian chart online akin to the show's chart, demonstrating how life sometimes imitates art. The L Word chart exemplifies an intriguing map concept that I would like to investigate further. It evokes fascinating themes relevant to tecnoculture: desire to connect, transference of the real life social world into the virtual realm, and digital imaging of social phenomena. I will continue to explore these themes in my work with interactive art.

The Nexus Friend Grapher taps into your Facebook social connections and maps them out spatially. The Grapher uses the nature of you and your friends' connections to one another to chart out how closely you're interconnected.

The March/April issue of Technology Review has an interesting piece on visualizing social networks. This one adds color to a social network chart to illustrate comment activity. The layout is typical social network analysis—hubs and spokes. But the Comment Flow visualization is based on communication. These images are created by tracking where and how often users left comments for other users; connections are based on these patterns, rather than on whether people have named each other as "friends." As the time since the last communication grows, the visual connection begins to fade.

Map Two: Mind Body Connection

2009-04-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

Mind-Body Perspective

The whole person model shown below is a way of illustrating how connected we are as human beings. Each of us has a deep, inner self ("I am") that is expressed outwardly through mind, body, spirit, relationship and the way we interact with the environment.

Relationship to Health

Mechanism Behind Mind-body Connection Discovered: Immune cells (stained blue) end in protective caps called telomeres (stained yellow) that are shorter in the elderly -- and in persons suffering chronic stress. A new UCLA study suggests cortisol is the culprit behind premature aging of the immune system and in stressed-out people. (UCLA/Effros lab)

Meditation as Mind-Body Practice & Stress Relief

Meditation is a mental discipline by which one attempts to get beyond the reflexive, "thinking" mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness. Meditation often involves turning attention to a single point of reference. It is recognized as a component of many religions, and has been practiced since antiquity. It is also practiced outside religious traditions. Different meditative disciplines encompass a wide range of spiritual and/or psychophysical practices which may emphasize different goals -- from achievement of a higher state of consciousness, to greater focus, creativity or self-awareness, or simply a more relaxed and peaceful frame of mind.

I'm interested in exploring how mind-body awareness and practice can be incorporated into a hyper-techno era in which the desire to connect to oneself and to others is stronger than ever, and yet we are becoming more and more disembodied. How can we embody our physical and technological selves simultaneously? I am interested in the intersections between mind-body awareness, health, meditation, expanded awareness, and creativity.

Map One: Digital Dance Mapping

2009-03-31T15:07:00.001-07:00

IBM Systems Journal featured an article on media in performance as the future of expressive communication. I'm particularly drawn to this notion as it relates to dance performance. I'm interested in exploring the interactions between dance -- physical interpretation, intuition, and expressions -- and digital media, especially video and virtual environments. I'm also curious about the idea of translation/interpretation as far as the ways in which digital technologies can translate dance movements, and also, how dancers themselves can interpret digital environments.

This article describes the relationship between performance and digital technology as "augmented performance" because this work augments the expressive range of possibilities for performers and rather than replacing the embodied performer, offers new possibilities for the traditional art. DanceSpace is a new technology that is an interactive stage that tracks dancers' motion in real time. Each separate part of the body can be mapped to different musical instruments, creating a body-driven keyboard. Thus, the dancers are empowered to compose their own accompanying music, as opposed to the traditional paradigm of choreography having to be restrained by the boundaries of a pre-composed musical score. A graphical output is also generated from the computer vision and in this way, the dancer's body becomes the paintbrush and a visual component complements the piece.

On stage, and also in the world of virtual space, dancers are autonomous agents, with mechanisms for sensing and interacting in their environment and also deciding which actions to take. They sense their surroundings through physical and virtual sensors. Interactive space creates an entirely new realm of possibilities for dance performance.

This piece, Choreographic Outcomes, from Dance-Interactive.com exemplifies well this concept of visual dance mapping. It demonstrates a "unique movement analysis and communication techniques known as HEISS pathways (Historic Equal Interval Still Sequences)... It bascially maps out a movement through the air, by tracing one body part's path through space. Every few frames the dancer's hand or foot position is recorded - these points are joined up to form an air path. This is then played along with the video to reveal something of the motif's form."

I intend to inform my final project with a dance aesthetic by attaching sensors to dancers that translate their movements into numbers and then into digital media. In this way, they will digitally chart the landscape of bodily movement in physical space. I will navigate a visual rhythm with line, shape, color, and sound. I have chosen a postmodern dance form, contact improv, as opposed to a classical form like ballet because I believe it allows for more freedom of expression, and is not confined to preconceived notions of physicality and space. With no predefined parameters, contact improv dance challenges the boundaries of dance and is not structured in a way that limits range of movement. It has been said that in contact improv, the floor is the dancer's first partner. Certainly, this opens up an entirely new dimension since classical forms like ballet do not permit dancers to roll around on the floor.

For my project, I am interested in the idea of dancers leaving visual and auditory trails through movement. If a dance were to be mapped out visually, it would produce a visual trail that reflects the range of movement within the piece, as well different qualities of movement, such as impulse, swing, velocity, and impact. Since ballet abides to specific rules regarding movement, the variety of the movement and its corresponding visual map, would not be as dynamic as those produced by contact improvisation. In the same way, it is also possible for dancers to generate auditory trails, or a musical score, that is composed with their bodies. Due to its improvisational nature, this score would necessarily explore a wide range in terms of tempo and octave in comparison to a classical ballet score.

Into the Deep

2009-03-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

Up until this point, I believe I have been honing my technical skills and theoretical insights in preparation for something significant. And now, I am ready to take the plunge into the ocean of my unknown artistic potential. It is an endeavor that is daunting and exhilarating at the same time. There is fear in not knowing what is possible, or of what I am capable, but also a boundlessness that is freeing. Before I jump in, I want to take inventory. This gives me confidence...

Technical - The tools with which I create:
Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Flash, Processing, Soundtrack Pro

Theoretical - The ideas that influence, and the lens through which I create:
subRosa, cyberfeminist cells, the paradox of embodiment, reiteration, viral memes, evolution of interactivity, Lessig, Jenkins, Chomsky, Butler, Haraway, Anzaldúa

Creative - The pieces, the expressions, the interpretations that I create:
Websites (my own and for work), video pieces in Austin venues, exhibitions at The Shoppe and Dazzle, my first Processing and Flash pieces, and "Taking Back the Tech" my cyberfeminist paper

With the knowledge of what I have achieved already, I feel a solid foundation under me that will serve as a springboard into the deep. The first ideas I find floating around are...

I discover the tools that I would like to possess to give greater range of expression to my work... Max MSP (time-based media set up nodally), Nodal, Net Logo, Chimera, Populous...

Also emerging are concepts, notions, glimmers that need further investigation...

Corporeality - Mapping the corporal experience, dance as poetry, dance as intuitive interpretation, dance in virtual spaces, live cinema in relationship to living/dancing bodies, energetic/chakra mapping, primary experience versus virtual experience, the cyborg experience, office culture and diminished physical interaction

Subjectivity - There is no absolute, everything is subjective, you find what you look for, we are subjective sensors, raised within a particular culture in order to see a particular way, ascribing qualities to inanimate objects/digital images, nostalgia/childhood, mimicry, precision and reiteration and subjectivity embedded within code

From here, I need to decide if I want to follow the lust for new tools, and immerse myself in the time-intensive discovery process inherent in learning new skills... or build upon my ideas with the strengths that I already possess and use the tools I already know how to manipulate in order to more clearly articulate my insights. Or both?