Friday, October 17, 2008

Homo Minifigus


I've seen more biologized, 'scientified' translations arising from a probably implicit feeling of aversion towards our essentially still superficial, appearance driven approach to technology design, but little did I know that this could be done with such originality and strikingness as Jason Freeny does with his digital imagery.

I would actually like LEGO to go more towards a biological approach. It could already start with giving each LEGO a tiny sensor and actuator, and have the thing shape itself through use. Of course there's already programmable LEGO, but this would be self-reprogramming LEGO where the physical and the mental development of an element are not separated in time or space.

I have the feeling that much of the Aristotelian residue in my head has emerged to a substantial extent from playing with LEGO, building my own world and society from a finite set of elements that are all based on an underlying principle, the geometric law of LEGO nature. A simplified, rationalized world that I can understand and control. It is time for LEGO to go wild and get children ready for a complex world that will not be the same anymore after one day.

Of course LEGO wouldn't be LEGO if it wouldn't have its iconic simplicity, but it at least could reformulate its simplicity in terms of the intrinsically generated dynamic behaviour of the elements, instead of their externally imposed form. I await the day that LEGO goes nano, but I am patient. I also await the day that we can create babies in the form of LEGO minifigs, by the way, and humanity has transcended its present-day understanding and self-concept, so many pointless barriers can finally dissolve. But again, I am patient.

Here is some more work that links to the merging of the biological and the technological by Jason Freeny:

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