Yesterday, I wrote about how my kinesphere looked different from the ideals of Vitruvius, iconized through the drawing Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci. In particular, my legs and arms do not fit within a circle like in Leonardo’s painting. My kinesphere looks different from Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The Wikipedia page lists a quite extensive description of the ideal measurements of a man: ...
This summer, I got a phone call from TEDx Arendal asking about whether I would like to hold a lecture for this year’s event. Of course, I had to accept! The excitement of being asked turned to awe when they asked me whether I would like to stand still in silence for the whole talk. This request did not come out of the blue. I have spent the last 15 years researching human standstill and have gotten some attention for my stillstanding project last year when I stood still for 10 minutes every day for a year. It was after this stunt that the Norwegian broadcasting company NRK called me Professor Stillstand, as a follow-up to my former nickname of Dr Air Guitar. ...
NRK has created a photo report based on my still standing project that I carried out last year. It’s a bit comical that they’ve called me “Professor Stillstand”. When I defended my PhD in 2008, I was actually named Dr Air Guitar. The concept was to stand still every day, for ten minutes, around midday. I recorded motion data using my mobile phone hanging around my neck and heart rate data from my sports watch. I’m now analyzing this data, and it will be included in the book Still Standing that I’m working on. Here’s an overview of all the sessions, one line per month. ...
Today is New Year’s Eve, and I have done my 365th standstill of the year. I began my year-long #StillStanding project on 1 January this year, and I am happy to report that I managed to conclude the project as planned! A few days were more challenging than others, but I am pleased I made recordings every day. I wrote a blog post after the first 100 days and a video of the first half year. My reflections today are the same as in those summaries. Now, I am looking forward to writing everything up in my upcoming book, so I will be brief in this blog post. ...
As part of my year-long StillStanding project, I post an average image of the spherical video recordings on Mastodon daily. Average images The average image is similar to an “open shutter” technique in photography; it overlays all the frames in a video. The result is an image that shows the most prominent parts of the video recording. This is ideal for my StillStanding recordings, because the technique effectively “removes” objects that appear in the recording for a short period of time. That means that people, cars, and animals do not appear. Since I stand still, the average image may look like a photography, but you can see that my face is blurred. ...
Today, I am halfway through my year-long #StillStanding project. Not so much has changed since I summed up the first 100 days. I still enjoy the experience, and there are new things to learn every day. Here is a 10-minute video I have recorded that presents the project, explains its rationale, and reflects upon some experiences so far: The biggest challenge moving forward is finding new spaces every day. I have already stood in the most accessible spaces, so I need to spend more time looking for unexplored rooms both at the university and close to my home. Follow the project on Mastodon to see how it goes.
I have been running Python-based Jupyter Notebooks for some time but never thought about using environments before quite recently. I have heard people talking about environments, but I didn’t understand why I would need it. Two days ago, I tried to upgrade to the latest version of the Musical Gestures Toolbox for Python and got stuck in a dependency nightmare. I tried to upgrade one of the packages that choked, but that only led to other packages breaking. I suddenly also found myself in a situation where one package wanted a newer version of a dependency while another wanted an older version. My approach to installing all the packages I would ever need was not a good idea. Then I realized that this is why people use environments. ...
Today, I stood still in a meeting room with an oddly ticking clock. This was part of my annual #StillStanding project which is documented on my Mastodon channel. There was nothing special about today’s session but the clock. The meeting room was furnished with a large table in the middle, a screen on the wall, and glass walls on both sides. The large ventilation system led to a noticeable low-frequency “hum” dominating the soundscape. As with all such rooms with glass walls, the sound insulation was not particularly efficient, so I could easily hear people walking and talking outside. ...
Today marks the 100th day of my annual #StillStanding project. In this blog post, I summarize some of my experiences so far. Endurance Some people questioned whether I would be able to stand still every single day for an entire year. But, hey, it is only ten minutes (out of 1440) per day, and even though my life as a centre director is busy, it is always possible to find time for a standstill sometime during the day. ...
For my annual Still Standing project, I am recording 360 videos with audio and sensor data while standing still for 10 minutes. I have started exploring how to visualize the sensor data best. Today, I am looking into visualization strategies for 360-degree images. I have written about how to pre-process 360-degree videos from Garmin VIRB and Ricoh Theta cameras previously. The Theta records in a dual fisheye format like this: ...