Colin Ellard - You Are Here

New website

At long last I have a proper website.

Aging with style

I can certainly see the attraction of this kind of setting for those in the early and healthy stages of what my mum-in-law calls "the youth of old age" and I can't imagine anyone not feeling some temptation to check into a permanent high class hotel of this type if they possibly had the wherewithall to do so.

At the same time, there does seem to be something a little sad about it, as if we can stave off the inevitable decline by pampering ourselves with vintage wine, crisp linen tablecloths, and snap-your-fingers concierge service.  In times like these where the only certainties about the future seem to be that there will be much less of everything to go around, instability, anxiety and tremendous human challenges, I'd like to think that those in the third trimester of life could offer up some mature vision and perhaps even some wisdom.  I find it hard to imagine those kinds of qualities emanating from pampered hallways like these.  Notice as well in the photo that this lovely lady sits quite alone in a large dining room.  Sad.  Doesn't it seem as though there must be ways to build settings that can encourage our elderly to contribute to the life of a community rather than to anesthetize them to the real?  I think that's what I'd want.

Bubbles, recursion, architecture

Another lovely ramble by Dan Hill in which he compares a design proposal for Holbaek Harbour in Denmark with the Aquatics Cube in Beijing.  What both share is the application of a recursive principle, somewhat inspired by natural forms, to solve a design problem.  As a psychologist interested in how we understand and move through spaces, I couldn't help but wonder about the Holbaek design's intelligibility.  I can see how it affords the residents a variety of views, angles, and quiet places of intimacy, but I'm intensely curious about how well it would work for wayfinding.  A colour coded overhead view shows how the intersections of streets make a simple kind of sense, but I'm not sure whether a street wanderer, or even a long-term resident, would ever form this kind of image of the streets.  And whether they did or not, how would a scheme like this affect feeling and behaviour?

Bad Cities

Want to feel good about your hometown?   Take a look at this.  Apologies to those who made the list.  Truthfully, I've visited a good handful of these places and had some fun in all of them.  Even Toledo.

Tip of the hat to another really interesting site I've just discovered that led me down this wicked path today.

Thomas Seebohm (1941-2008)

I've suffered a wicked body blow this weekend.  I've written in these pages many times of the crazy mid-career epiphany that saw my research program suddenly lurch from systematic studies of low level vision in small critters to an explosion of ideas relating to planning, architecture, design, transportation, virtual reality, new media art.  I've also written (in fact this is the point of the blog) of the book that has emerged from this sudden mad change in my life's course.  It isn't as if any of this was managed alone.  I've had a supportive family who let me go nuts and who followed me to a tiny dot on the map in Nova Scotia to do it.  I've had an indulgent university administration which has not only let me follow my strange new dreams, but has supported them both spiritually and materially.  But perhaps more than anything else, I've had the friendship and encouragement of an architect named Thomas Seebohm.  Thomas was a professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo who spent more than 20 years trying to blaze a trail through the emerging field of digital architecture.  Using cutting edge design tools, Thomas was interested in looking into the future--seeing buildings, streetscapes and neighbourhoods emerge in pixels before there were any bricks and mortar.  Finding ways to assess what worked and what didn't before any construction took place.  We had known about one another for years (years I now have bitter regrets for missing out on his companionship) before we finally got into the same room together to talk.  From our first meeting (a planned one hour visit which stretched to a half-day, both of us oblivious to the passage of time), we were astonished by how much two people from entirely different disciplines and backgrounds shared in common, from ideas about methodology to theory to a conviction that our efforts could make the world a better, healthier, happier place.  More than anything, we agreed that the shape and appearances of spaces could exert a profound influence on human behaviour, and this influence could be used to great ends.

Thomas and I had just begun an ambitious agenda of experiments together asking questions about how people form connections with the places where they live and how these very important connections can be measured with the tools of science.  In a remarkably short period of time, we'd forged proposals, won funding, attracted good students, and over the past few weeks we'd just begun to collect some fascinating data.  We had enough plans together that I sometimes stayed up late at night worrying about how we could fit everything in to the few years we had left before Thomas' planned retirement.

On his annual hiatus to his mother's house in Quebec's Eastern Townships, Thomas was felled by a heart attack while riding his bicycle.  He didn't survive.  On the day I heard the news, I had spent many hours rambling the city with my children, visiting our farmer's market, our great parks, and some of our urban neighbourhoods.  I'm growing to love this city more as I begin to understand where it came from, the issues that have shaped it, and the people who have helped to make it.  What was most remarkable to me last night as I sat paralyzed by the news was how much of the day I had spent enjoying parts of the city that had developed under the steady, patient and careful gaze and attention of Thomas Seebohm.  Our city has lost a visionary who told me only a few weeks ago that he felt that, for the first time in his life, the tools were now available to him to realize the dreams of his life's work.

It's hard to see how to carry on without him at the moment, but I know that I must.  The dreams we had together to continue to understand, quantify and amplify the influence of built space on human behaviour using the tools of modern computing and modern psychology are just too important to die with him.  I will always miss him.  I only hope the work that lies ahead will honour his memory.

Almost home

.

.

As you read this, I'm somewhere on an ugly highway.   Travels to the ocean seem like a distant memory already.

Vacation is coming to an end soon

.

.

Why are the best sunsets near the ends of vacations?

promart

I try not to use this site as an op-ed soap box, but while I'm on hiatus from vacation and within reach of a good internet connection, I've been reading some of the press about the Promart controversy in which the Canadian federal government is cutting a program that provides funding to Canadian artists for travel abroad.  Much of this travel is designed to heighten international awareness of Canadian cultural activities, whether this be international readings for an author or an overseas concert for a performer.  I think this makes it fair game for this blog, since part of what I'm all about is understanding the influence of physical space on human behaviour, and grants such as Promart are meant to help overcome some of the limitations imposed by space (yes, a reach, I know, but humour me -- officially I'm still on holidays).

Rumours swirl about the reasons for the cut, but the most oft-cited story suggests that some members of our government have taken offense to the agendas or artistic identities of some of the individuals who received funds.  Predictably, some of the mainstream press with narrow prejudices have waded in with much chuffing of "good riddance" to a program that dares to provide funding to radical Muslims.  The horror!

The government, just as predictably, is saying that this is all just about routine budget adjustments.  For me, the saddest part of the whole story is that these measures are being undertaken by a government that professes to represent the views of the majority of Canadians.  I really hope this isn't true, especially as I don't know of much evidence that our current prime minister reads books.

Here's one interesting account of how some controversial Promart funding came about for a "wealthy" rock star.  As you'll read, Tal Bachman not only didn't know his funding had come from Promart but he had been invited on what sounds like a fantastic exchange by the government and had attended along with various officials (including a Mulroney appointed senator) who sounded as though they had much less of a useful role on the visit but probably got some funding from somewhere.

Now I'll go and put my vacation hat back on in, ironically, our nation's capital.

Recursion in nature

I've spent a lot of time this summer looking for recursive patterns in nature.  These patterns, repeating but not quite repeating, bursting with shape and colour at different scales of space, are both incredibly attractive, interesting, but also soothing.  The word that keeps occurring to me is resonance.  There's something out there that plays a nice tune using some ancient brain circuits of mine as an instrument.
This kind of recursion can take place at a wide range of sizes, from little blossoms in the forest, to sweeping rays of light and contours of clouds encompassing half the sky.  This particular combination of colour and pattern in both the sky and the lake was difficult to tear my eyes away from.

Ferns are great places to find these recursive patterns.  If you click on the fern picture, you should be able to see a larger image--large enough to see how the patterns of the leaves repeat themselves at multiple scales.  Evidence is beginning to accumulate that looking at these types of repeating patterns has a remarkable effect on how we feel--even our breathing patterns and heart rate are affected.

Lake Huron

Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.  -Loren Eiseley