For the Sleepwalkers

Tonight I want to say something wonderful
for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith
in their legs, so much faith in the invisible

arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path
that leads to the stairs instead of the window,
the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.

I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing
to step out of their bodies into the night,
to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,

palming the blank spaces, touching everything.
Always they return home safely, like blind men
who know it is morning by feeling shadows.

And always they wake up as themselves again.
That’s why I want to say something astonishing
like: Our hearts are leaving our bodies.

Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs
flying through the trees at night, soaking up
the darkest beams of moonlight, the music

of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.
And now our hearts are thick black fists
flying back to the glove of our chests.

We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.
We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-
walkers who rise out of their calm beds

and walk through the skin of another life.
We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness
and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.

–Edward Hirsch

A violinist playing in the Washington DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later
the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the till and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes
A 3 year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly, as the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced them to move on.

45 minutes
The musician played. Only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace.
He collected $32.

1 hour
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ….

How many other things are we missing?

We took WikiReader to the MoMA. It was like discovering a fifth dimension.

She writes, “The most important moment of three-day #openmoko trip to Germany!”

Now, I have no idea what this trip was all about, but I feel like the man in the picture each morning I look into our new office’s windows: Something interesting is coming from behind those walls…

Hara sees things slightly different – I would say more profound. Exformation, he says, is the form as well as the function of information, not for making things known, but for making things unknown. “In” is to “ex” as “inform” is to “exform”.  

Why making something unknown? Hara argues:

What constantly invigorates the human mind is the unknown; we aren’t animated by what we already know, but we’re eager to make the world known.

Instead of communicating by making known, if we make understood how little we know, Hara believes, we will begin asking idiosyncratic questions. These questions will (naturally) lead to unique answers. 

I can clearly see the importance of exformation. Knowledge alone, no longer seems to activate the senses the way it did in my University days. Our supply of information has exceeded critical mass. Most people I know are overloaded. By making something unknown, we can reawaken that feeling of discovery all over again.  

Hara is a teacher at Musashino Art University in Tokyo. He asked his students to make something known, unknown. This first exformation project was about the Shimanto River. Here are some pictures:

His students created composites of asphalt roads on the water’s surface:

Familiar objects function as a measuring stick to infer the size or shape of something new or unknown to us. Layered roads let us experience the river with a reality far exceeding our expectation. We have never seen a river in quite this way. The incompatibility of the human-made objects (roads) juxtaposed with nature (the river) grabs our attention and etches the memory of the river’s shape into our brains. 

I find this all very inspiring and fundamental to my work so I wanted to share it with you all today. Let’s go find new ways to make the world unknown!

Motivation is high at Openmoko. We’re working on two very exciting new products. And we just moved into a new office:

(Besides somebody spamming our lists, the move has been surprisingly smooth.)

We’ve been laboring away like an Ox to bring you all a robust open phone in 2009. I can assure you the future looks good.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Maybe it’s the emptiness of paper that’s makes it more a state of mind than an object.

I went back.