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Dragons coming from the pavement
125 Plays3 months ago
What are the limits of our imagination? Can we imagine an apple 100 miles away, or a sound higher pitched that we can hear? Can we project our imaginations into our actual vision?
Vynn and Francis are interviewed by video games designer Berbank Green. He stretches our imagination with a series of exercises (see full list below).
Can you imagine a smell that knocks you out? Can you imagine an apple as large as the moon? How accurate are our imaginations?
Berbank describes his “prophantasic” ability to put an imagined apple on the actual table in his real vision, and how he used this in childhood.
Timestamps:
00:48 Detail of imagining an apple
05:10 Imagining a distant apple
09:00 An eagle’s perception
11:18 Microscopic and earth-sized apples
16:13 Thinking of lots of apples at once
19:30 4D apples
23:48 Inner experience of designing a video game
27:07 Imagining emotions in video games
30:35 Limits of audio imagination
35:17 Prophantasia - imagining things in the real world
40:10 Imagining being something else
51:40 Noticing where language comes from
57:23 Dreaming and the subconscious
64:02 Apple having an eccentric British accent
Show Links:
- Teach Your Monster to Read - a video game Berbank made
- Berbank’s Twitter account
- Miegakure - a true 4D puzzle-platforming game
- Fire Kasina with Jane Flowers - earlier episode of this podcast
- Consider Phlebas - novel with mind fragmenting
Berbank’s Imagination Exercises:
Imagine an apple
- what does it look like?
- where is it?
- can you smell it?
- taste it?
- feel how heavy it is?
- does it make you remember anything?
OK now test limits:
- Can you see the apple if it's behind you?
- How far away can you make the apple before you can't see it?
- What is your perspective of the apple at this distance?
- How small can you imagine that apple?
- What happens when it gets too small?
- How heavy is that?
- Can you make it lighter?
- Can you feel how light your max imagination is?
- How large can you imagine it?
- What happens when it gets too large?
- How heavy is that?
- Can you make it heavier?
- Can you feel how heavy your max imagination is?
- How many apples can you think of at once?
- How powerful can you make the smell of the apple?
- Can you imagine it to the point where it's overwhelming?
- Can you imagine a 4 dimensional apple?
- Can you imagine an apple that has a face?
- That's actually in front of you?
- That's floating in front of you with sparkling effects and crackling lightning?
- That's talking to you in an eccentric British accent?
etc. etc
Contact Details:
Twitter: @imagine_apple @SurenVynn @frabcus
Email: [email protected]
Theme by: @MJPiercello
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Transcript
Introduction and Imaginative Apple Descriptions
00:00:00
Speaker
Another funny thing would be to imagine what you could do with an apple. So can you make it appear in front of you with like sparkly effects? And can you make it have an English accent and a monocol and a moustache and talk to you?
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome, welcome to another episode of Imagine Apple with me as your host Vin and Francis. Hey, hello. Today we'll be having a conversation with Burbank, who has the amazing capability of being able to imagine dragons coming out of the pavement. So would you like to introduce us yourself, Burbank? Yes, I'm Burbank Green, I'm a Games Designer, and thanks for having me on your podcast.
Exploring Imagination: Sensory and Beyond
00:00:46
Speaker
Wonderful. So before we go on, this is sort of becoming a rite of passage for anyone who comes onto our podcast. The first thing we have to ask you now is,
00:00:58
Speaker
Can you imagine an apple? Yes, I can imagine an apple. Yes, it's so it's a greeny red. I think I found it's out as a Braeburn apple and it's on a white plate on a white linen sheet on a table. And that's a large window to the left, letting in a lot of light. And I can see um beads of water on the apple and I can also smell the apple and I can feel how heavy it is and I can taste it, but I'm not eating it. I can just see it. That's pretty fantastic. Usually people, when I ask them to visualize an apple, they do just that. They imagine an apple, but you've gone well beyond that and imagine the window and the setting behind it. And you can also smell that. So this is quite interesting because that's new. No one has ever been able to
00:01:51
Speaker
imagine smells. Can you tell me what that's like? Do you remember the smell of the apple or can you conjure the smell of it as you're thinking of it? I can conjure the smell of it so much that the saliva glands in my mouth are starting to, I can feel it's like getting wet. That's incredible. Francis and I have been talking about this sort of thing for about, I don't know, 12 years or something. So I've had a lot of practice thinking about apples and other things. so much Can you also do that with things other than apples? So can you imagine? Yeah, I can do I can smell a banana now and I can see it. It's quite a squidgy banana, lots of black bits on it.
00:02:30
Speaker
That's impressive. Wow. We found someone who's much better at Fantasia than even I am. Well, you have a magic ability that I don't have, I think, which is you can you can imagine text, can't you? I can dream in text. Yes. Yes. I don't have any text ability at all. I can't imagine. I can sort of imagine a page of some text, but it gets very blurry and I can't say properly. So it's very much visual based rather than like text based. Fascinating.
00:03:00
Speaker
Right. Well, I've got a question about the smell of the apple, because i don't think i I think of apples as having a taste, and I know taste and smell are very related, but I don't really think of them as having a strong smell. It's not strong, but it's sweet. It's a sweet smell. yeah And is it the smell after you've bitten into it? or Because they smell more while you're eating them, or when you're we've cut one up.
Limits and Enhancements of Imagination
00:03:23
Speaker
I can choose between both now, you ask. So I'm thinking about it now as I haven't eaten it. But if I do bite into it, I can smell the ah extra smells. Wow. Can you also imagine the texture in your mouth? Yes. OK. Yes, I can almost chewing on it now. I've got to ask another imagined smell question then. Can you kind of construct creative new smells that aren't memories?
00:03:53
Speaker
That's a good question. Give me an example and I'll see if I can do it. I don't know. Have you watched Ratatouille before where he starts like eating all the different kinds of things and then he has like visualizations of, I don't know, cheese and st strawberry. Or combining them. Yeah. yeah i think remember that yeah So this is something I thought about is that I reckon chefs might be really good, which so I think you should interview some chefs. I can't do combinations that well, but I can do individual smells fairly well. So I can imagine broccoli now, and now I can do parmesan.
00:04:29
Speaker
Yeah, I can do them. I'm quite slow at it, and I can't combine them that easily, but yeah, there are probably people who can do this really well. So ah an alien has just invaded from Mars, and they're kind of organic and a bit humanoid and green, and they land and walk up to you. Can you imagine what they smell like? I can imagine alien smell, but I don't know. if It wouldn't be what they smell like in real life. And it's a new smell. It's not a remembered smell.
00:04:51
Speaker
he It smells quite like a pond when I'm thinking of it. and So I guess it's like I'm fusing the sort of greenness with pondness and stickiness. Yeah. That's so cool.
00:05:08
Speaker
So yeah, before this interview, I sent you a whole list of questions I've been thinking about for a long time. Should we talk about that? Do you have a particular question that you the to want to answer? Like is there a pet question you like to explore?
00:05:23
Speaker
Well, I think what I'm really interested in is limits of imagination. So so we're talking about smell just now. Can you can you imagine it a smell that's so overpowering that it really knocks you out? Or can you can you imagine an apple that's really far away, so far away you can't see it? Or something that's so large that it stops being imaginable or heavy? These sort of limits I'm really interested in and seeing if people have very different limits.
00:05:51
Speaker
Well, can you do that? Can you imagine a smell so strong? that i't know I'm not so good at smells. So I can imagine quite strong smells, but they're within the limits of my own experience. And I think that's going to be common with a lot of answers as.
00:06:06
Speaker
people's experiences are going to show their limits of their imagination. but So I very quickly dropped into the concept of the smell that knocks everyone out and it had a kind of kinetic component to it. Like it was literally people were like falling over, but I couldn't actually imagine the smell. I can't imagine any smells. The apple far away, I get like a like a long tube almost. It's very spatial. It's not really, and the apple is like a tiny, tiny distant dot.
00:06:34
Speaker
How distant? How far? Roughly. Oh, I don't think it's... I don't think it's that far. Probably only like 100 miles away or something. 100 miles is a long way, Walt. It's only 100 miles away. I mean, a long way would be... A long way would be like in another galaxy.
00:06:56
Speaker
Oh sure, but are you seeing it? Or are you feeling it? It's basically just a green dot. It's a bit like like the pale blue dot or something. okay but Place photo of the pale blue dot. Let's put a medium distance view. Say you're imagining the apple on, let's say, the moon, which isn't that far away. OK, where are you when you're imagining it? How far away is the moon? I don't know. It's quite far. Well, you were saying galaxies. so you know So I can't do that without doing camera cuts.
The Intersection of Vision and Imagination
00:07:27
Speaker
So my camera cuts to on the moon with the apple down. It's like I'm in a drone or something and the apple's on the ground and it's like a tiny, small apple. So what I'm saying is without moving where you are, how far away can you imagine the apple? About as far as if you're on a mountain or you're looking at the horizon. So like certainly 20 miles. Yeah. But I obviously couldn't really see it. I'm only imagining seeing it. OK.
00:07:52
Speaker
So that's an interesting thing, right? So your perception of it internally is limited by your external perception of it. So if you could see it in real life, you could possibly imagine it. But if it got a bit further away so you couldn't see it in real life, it stops being easy to imagine.
00:08:08
Speaker
But I can have a conceptual tunnel of it being a long way away. So and when I said 100 miles, that was not a memory of a thing seeing a thing that far away. It was like the concept of when it had like ah energy to it. The concepts are a lot easier to imagine. it Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:23
Speaker
visualization, like for me at least, I think I could imagine it like 15 meters away and then that's probably when I would like stop being able to see it sort of like this disappears into my horizon, but I think. But that's what Birbeger's kind of going to do. Don't you blend the visual with a conceptual? Because I've got, yeah as it gets further away, I can't remember seeing something that distance, but I can make like this compound of the two. So you're saying particularly remember, which is the interesting thing. So yes, obviously you can swap between visual imagination and conceptual imagination as it gets further away. But one other thing you could do is imagine you have better perception, like an eagle's perception, and you can see the apple further away. But how how far can you push that? Oh, that's interesting. You know, if you've got a 15 gigapixel camera,
00:09:17
Speaker
You can imagine an apple quite a long way away. But then you'd go into like superhuman perception. That's right. I mean, I obviously have never experienced that, but I have experienced something similar to that, which is when I get new prescription glasses. So when I put in but my new glasses on, it's like I'm able to see things more sharply and that first glance at the sky is such an overwhelming feeling because before it was it was just you know it's blurry at best and the sky was blue and then suddenly with the new prescription glasses or contact lenses
00:09:57
Speaker
I can start to see like wisp of cloud and and an eagle flying in the distance. And suddenly they're all there now. And I can see the stars and the cover of the sky. And that's just me with like not quite like superhuman vision, but just like human vision at its like best, maybe like 2020 vision. yeah I don't know if I could imagine it to a superhuman degree. I don't know what an eagle would be able to see, though I do you imagine it to be much better than human.
00:10:28
Speaker
Could I do that? I don't know. I haven't tried. Could you do that? like Well, I can a bit. So Chuck Yeager is a famous test pilot and he had 2010 vision. and i was When I was younger, I had nearly 2010 vision. So I could see much, much better than most people, but I didn't know I could do that. So when people could read things far away, I was confused. I just thought they were joking or something for a while. I don't have 2010 vision anymore, unfortunately.
00:10:56
Speaker
But i can I can extrapolate from that to have a slightly better vision. I can't do properly Eagle vision and having like a supercomputer vision with a 15 gigapixel camera I can't do either. I can approach it slowly. I think the more you do it, the better you get at it. Hmm. Just a fascinating.
00:11:17
Speaker
I can do like microscopic vision because I'm short sighted. So whenever I'm looking at things ah without my glasses, I can get it much closer up to my face and get to see more detail. But obviously when I have corrective vision, that all goes like Orion. I have to like take it away from my face a little bit. So maybe In that direction, I can do much better. I can see much smaller and more refined like things in my vision than someone with 20-20 vision, for instance. So like I think I can imagine it in that direction rather than like but things in the far off distance. So if you extrapolate that down, if you imagine you've got a keyboard in front of you, do you?
00:12:10
Speaker
So if you imagine an apple on your KK, for instance, and it's just on the top right of that K and it's tiny, how much smaller can you make it? Can you zoom in and zoom in and zoom in? I think I could only ah make it as small as a as a grain of sand at best. I mean, I quickly imagine it atom sized and camera pan to it being like a weird apple shaped atom.
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, but you're camera panning, you have to after camera. Yeah, I've started a zoom, like a micro zoom camera. And the same you yeah the same with a large apple. If I imagine a larger and larger apple, it's quite easy to imagine an apple the size of the Earth, just in orbit around the sun. And I can just about imagine a galaxy sized apple. That's hard because galaxies are destroying objects, not a whole object like the Earth. But all I'm doing is camera panning back. Yeah. You can imagine the earth's an Earth sized apple then.
00:13:05
Speaker
No, I don't think I can. No, I don't think I can. I need to have a sense of how big the Earth is, and I don't think I know how big the Earth is. Me either. Oh, so I think it's almost easier for me because my imagination's so bad, so I don't really care.
00:13:23
Speaker
So I can easily get, it's as good to me as imagining a normal apple much more easily because the quality detail I need is less. So this is this is an accuracy issue, right? So if you're imagining, let's say the weight of an apple, I've got a fairly good feel of how weighty an apple is. If you expand it out to like the weight of a car, you get a sense of how heavy that is, but your accuracy goes down. If it was heavy as a bag of flour, you've got pretty good sense of that. And you can go all the way down to maybe a pin.
00:13:54
Speaker
But after that, it starts getting hazy again. Yeah, and apples are less dense than a bag of flour, so it's going to be bigger. But I couldn't tell you whether it's how much bigger it is to weigh the same as the bag of flour. Well, just if it was the same size, but weight as much as a bag of flour. If you just extrapolate just the weight, but keep the size of the apples.
00:14:16
Speaker
That's weird because it wouldn't feel like an apple or a bag of flour. It would feel like a, yeah. Yeah. But you're just seeing what the extent of your imagination for just weight is. Yeah. Can you do that? To what? To what level? The weight of the apple and then also the size, the earth size apple.
00:14:40
Speaker
I can't do Earth-sized Apple because I don't have a good enough understanding of how big the Earth is. I mean, I have a scientific understanding and a conceptual understanding, but not an experiential understanding. You can't imagine being like in orbit and seeing the Earth-sized Apple below you. Easy, yeah. So that's an imagining an Earth-sized Apple, isn't it? Really. It doesn't feel like it's nearly accurate enough. But just have it the same size as pictures you've seen from orbit.
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't feel nearly as accurate. It feels like a very rough approximation. Yeah. So all my imagination is that rough? Right. Yeah. So accuracy of your imagination is just as important as sort of the range of it imagination. And they're all important or they're all useful things to, I'd say useful.
Realistic vs. Fictional Imagination
00:15:28
Speaker
They're completely unuseful, but they're interesting. But do you think this makes me happier imagining more far out things because I don't care about the accuracy as much?
00:15:37
Speaker
I don't think it has any, I don't know how it would affect your happiness. I guess that's individual. but No, I mean more willing to. We face a question. So, I mean, some people don't like science fiction, and fantasy and like extreme imagined things. And I wonder if you've got a really accurate imagination, you prefer to imagine realistic things or something. Yeah. yeah because you have no framework for knowing whether the more way out things are wrong. Whereas is most of my stuff's conceptual and the element I need this visual is relatively simple to do. who I don't worry as much. Yeah, could be. Yeah. I mean, these are all different areas of it investigation, aren't they? Cool. Okay. So a question I really want to explore is, and before we go into that, maybe I should start with something simpler. How many apples can you think of at once?
00:16:32
Speaker
ah joy for Yeah, but seven. No, it gets high five. Yeah. No, I can imagine a lot small, but yeah, but but great detail. I thought you're in detail. Yes. Five, six. So if you imagine a barrel full of apples, you could do that. Are they less detailed? Well, the barrel is different. So bowel you can only see the top surface.
00:17:00
Speaker
And I'm imagining a collection of our apples rather than individual apples at the top. So that's easier. I can conceptually get that. So you can't see apple on the top? I can, but it's like foveated rendering. I can see an individual apple if I look at it, but looking at the whole top, I'm aware that I think I can see it properly. But if I look properly, some of the apples are a bit kind of blurry and the more conceptual than visual. So you can't count them, the ones how many there are on top.
00:17:30
Speaker
If I did fovea to rendering, I probably could, but it would take quite a lot of effort. Interesting. I've never thought about the number of apples I could imagine. So I've always just imagined, oh, I can sort of imagine a flood of apples, but then obviously the accuracy would would suffer. Yeah.
00:17:52
Speaker
I would never tried you know try to imagine each individual apple and see how many I could conjure up in one go. I have to give that a go. But you said seven. Yeah, seven's about my limit. Although obviously I can conceptually see a lot more. you think we Did you start off with seven or did you work your way up to seven? Because this is interesting. because I think I started with four or five worked up.
00:18:21
Speaker
How long did it take for you to get there? Uh, four seconds or something like that from four to seven. After seven, it's going up to like 10 or 12 seconds. So it's not that difficult. It's like, you could, you only have to work at it for maybe like a few seconds and then you're suddenly like going faster for your limits.
00:18:47
Speaker
Well, yeah, it's getting harder and harder every extra apple I'm adding to properly visualize it. And this is just purely visualization. There's no like factory sensation to it. No, I can add that. But again, it gets harder. And I think my apple. Yeah, there's a limit. There's an informational limit I've got. And there's a difference between smelling one apple and smelling three apples. Yes, but not a good difference.
00:19:15
Speaker
So if I keep my very low quality of imagining one apple, I can only get up to at best three and maintain that level of quality. Hmm. Yeah.
Higher-Dimensional Imagination
00:19:26
Speaker
Interesting. yeah Okay. So what about four dimensional apples?
00:19:35
Speaker
Yeah. So I put that on the list cause I was, I thought of it just while I was putting it down. even I don't know where to go with that. So I've been talking to Francis about four dimensional, well, hyperspheres. And I've been practicing trying to imagine those properly and had some success. And an apple was roughly a sphere. So how much more difficult could it be to imagine a hyper apple? But it is actually quite difficult. So I have not got very far with that because I only thought of it this morning.
00:20:10
Speaker
How about you? Can you think of a paper apple? I don't think I could imagine what a four-dimensional apple looks like. I can just about barely imagine what a tesseract is supposed to look like. And only because tesseracs are now like a pop culture phenomenon in like yeah science fiction. And so they show the tesseract like rotating. So I seen it and I know what it's supposed to look like from memory, but I don't think I could imagine four-dimensional cube or four-dimensional sphere or even four-dimensional pyramids from scratch, if you get what I mean? Yeah. So, I mean, I've done the same as you. I've watched lots of Tesseract and wonder if I could... I think if I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't be able to do it. But with a hypersphere, it's a little easier and I can't imagine it from a four-dimensional perspective, but I can imagine slices from a three-dimensional perspective. perspective
00:21:03
Speaker
and I'm getting better at that, but I'm trying to make the leap to four dimensions, but I'm not sure it's possible with our human brains. So it's funny because the first thing I think of is of is is conceptual in that I'm easily thinking about digestive systems being fundamentally three-dimensional because you can't have a hole all the way through an organism, but it's two-dimensional, that's putting it in half, so that I'm wondering immediately if you have the digestive system of a four-dimensional creature.
00:21:29
Speaker
is that Is that similar? maybe Is that two-dimensional, three-dimensional? And that that would be impact like what apple they could eat or what apple evolved and what apple, in the ecosystem of four-dimensional things, eating each other, what even is an apple? And I think I don't know enough to know where that goes, but that's where I would start.
00:21:54
Speaker
That's where you'd start. That's a whole level of complexity beyond where I'd want to start. Just just the apple on its own is difficult enough. well I think it would look different because I think the way seeding would happen in the four-dimensional space would be different. So the apple would be a different... Yeah. Yeah. You can extrapolate in all sorts of different ways ah how how different it would be, but I'm just starting with just its shape but and that's hard enough.
00:22:20
Speaker
This reminds me of that four-dimensional game. I can't remember what it's called. There was a game that got a lot of hype a few years back, which involved four-dimensional game mechanics.
00:22:37
Speaker
Do you think you'd ever like make a game that involved a four-dimensional Apple or something? Oh, I'd love to. I mean, I love that. I can't remember the name of it either, but it was a really fascinating to watch and I could see how it would be interesting to play. I think he had some trouble with level with design with that for understandable reasons. Yeah, I think it's a fascinating to play with. and There's a toy he made for IOS, I think, which is a four-dimensional, I think it's called four-dimensional toys, where he took the programming of that and made primitive shapes in 4D that you could play with and throw around. And that was really fun. Yeah, it's a fascinating area to think of because I don't, I'm not sure the human brain is capable of doing it at all. There's an entire Wikipedia article with a list of four-dimensional games.
00:23:33
Speaker
I've just done a ah Google search and the one that I was thinking of was Miyagakure, which is a map
Imagination in Game Design
00:23:39
Speaker
game where you're supposed to like, yeah, but that's what it's named if anyone, that's that's the name of the game I was thinking of if anyone's wondering. Cool. So going back to the video game theme, when you're designing a video game, what is your inner mental experience like? it's If it's right at the start of the design, it will be fully trying to imagine playing it as if I'm sitting in front of a screen playing it. So I it's ah say fully. Usually it's kind of box-based so it's not fully realised characters or scenery
00:24:22
Speaker
But it is shapes and mechanics, because mechanics is usually a thing you want to start with, with a game. um So I will imagine the mechanics in as much detail as possible and play it through and see what problems might arise. And that I would say that's somewhere between 60 to 80% accurate. And then um if it's good, I'll try and prototype it. And depending on my programming ability, that will come out closer or not to my imagination. And then I'll iterate from there. but It saves a lot of time if you can imagine it first. Can you tell us more about like what sorts of games you design? So I spent the last 12 years making a game called Teacher Monster to Read, which is an educational game for kids. And then before that, I worked on various traditional games. I worked on Sims 2 Mobile and Final Fantasy.
00:25:19
Speaker
and creatures and a number of other games. Do you feel like you have different facets of your imagination that you have to use depending on the game and the mechanics involved?
00:25:34
Speaker
When you're designing a computer game, there's a bit of the audience in mind, and there's a bit of your own playing in mind. And you've got to be careful about which one you're designing for. You've also got to be careful about what your priorities are. So there's a story-based game design, and there's action-based game design, and there's puzzle-based game design.
00:25:54
Speaker
And they'll require so different perspectives on things and different um priorities. And then there's level design, which is a whole other aspect to it. And then there's ah the whole soundscape of the game, which is incredibly important and rarely talked about, which gives you the whole kinesthetic feel of the game.
00:26:14
Speaker
Well, I say more emotional for you in the game. So just the way something hits something else and how it sounds gives you a whole different impression of what that thing is and what the interaction is like. So I try and move around perspectives as much as possible once I've got mechanics roughly in place. Move around in your imagination, you mean.
00:26:36
Speaker
Yeah, move around conceptually. So move around. OK, this is what it should sound like because we're in this kind of landscape and we're from this camera perspective and it's this kind of air or space. So it would mean this sort of reverberation or echo or anything like that. um This character has I need the player to feel a certain thing from this character. So it needs to have this sort of language. And it should be surprising because that's always fun in the computer game. So how do we make language surprising just through text? and There's lots of different perspectives.
00:27:06
Speaker
How does this translate to the emotions, whether it's the emotions that you imagine your characters in the game to feel or emotions in like real life? What's your imagination capabilities when it comes to the emotions of people? it's I guess it's complicated for everyone. I like to try and put myself in different people's perspectives.
00:27:36
Speaker
That caught that quote takes quite a lot of effort. So we're we're making when we're making educational games, this is me and my business partner, we're thinking about If you're a young kid, and we both have dyslexia, myself and my business partner, and we both had a rough time at school, so we know what it's like to be in a classroom with lots of smarter kids, supposedly, and they're all getting the right answers and you're not getting the right answer. So when we're designing a computer game for education reasons, we're trying to think, okay,
00:28:13
Speaker
putting ourselves back into that situation, what could the game do to make us feel more confident and more interested in learning? And what are the things that put us off? So we're trying to make things that don't chastise you for getting things wrong. In fact, they encourage you sometimes to get things wrong because then you're more incentivized to get things right. So if you get things wrong in some of our games, something funny will happen.
00:28:42
Speaker
And the player might laugh and feel much more relaxed about trying it again, because it's funny and they might want to get it purposely wrong again. But eventually they need to get it right to progress, but we're not punishing them for not progressing. So that's partly making the film more comfortable. So there's I mean, there's a whole whole conversation we have just about emotions, but that's that's a good start, I guess. So do you imagine yourself being different people playing the game?
00:29:11
Speaker
um Yes, but I think I'm drawing a lot on experience as well. So i mean i'm like again, I'm extrapolating from my own experience to some extreme sometimes.
00:29:26
Speaker
So you'll have an idea and you might like imagine the emotion of what a kid will feel like when that happens. Yeah. And you'll feel that emotion in your body and your imagination. How does that feel like? I think when I'm doing it for work, it's more conceptual. So I understand that they might feel this way because of this thing. And I try and imagine from as many different perspectives as possible what they would feel in this situation.
00:29:50
Speaker
So I'm trying not to put any particular perspective off playing more of it. So some might be playing it because it's funny, some might be playing it because it looks good or it plays well. There's all sorts of different avenues that people will take into playing a game. Yeah. But that part's quite conceptual in contrast to the sound, which sounded more like you're imagining the audio.
Imagination and Sound
00:30:11
Speaker
Yes.
00:30:13
Speaker
Yes, I think so because I don't want to get sort of emotionally bound in the game. I'm just doing it as a mechanic almost. Whereas the sound is because it is so emotional. I'm thinking about it in more detail. It's quite important sound, so I think about it a lot.
00:30:30
Speaker
Okay, going back to pushing your imagination to the limits. What's your ability? What's your audio imaginative? these are like How far can you push it? What does it feel like to have her an audio or like a sound clip in your head? Yeah. So I've got pretty good recall of music. I can, if I'm thinking about it now, I can imagine a number of songs.
00:31:00
Speaker
fairly accurately. So there's that aspect of it, that small memory thing. And then there's range of sound. And I think my imagination is fairly close to normal auditory hearing. I mean, if you try and do this, if you imagine a really high pitched noise and then increase that pitch, what happens to it? Does it disappear? What happens?
00:31:24
Speaker
for me at least it probably reaches the highest pitch I can imagine and then yeah slowly starts to recede. um And I'm not sure if it's this is a result of me actually imagining the sound or if it's because I've done those tests so many times where I test how far I can hear by you know my abilities and it always falls short of like 20 thousand hertz or whatever. So yeah, I think it might be coming from memory, just the idea that I can gradually increase the pitch of us of a noise and then gradually hear it. And when you're imagining it, can you really hear it? I think I can. Yeah.
00:32:11
Speaker
Maybe not that so much the higher the the higher pitches, because that seems a bit that feels like I'm stretching it a bit. And even if I try to like pull it from memory, it's I struggle. Whereas any kind of sound that is well within human range is very easy for me to hear. And I can heat ah hold at least like four different melodic lines um so I can easily imagine a ah simple orchestra, but not too much more complex that I would be able to, yeah. I can do about four as well. Do you play an instrument then? I used to be able to play the piano quite well, but I think I struggle to play the piano now. But I think it's interesting that you can only go as far as your experience goes.
00:33:06
Speaker
yeah This is so subtle. Yeah, because I have to partially have myself singing it, but I can imagine a higher tone than I can make. But when it gets beyond my hearing limit, a camera cut, and I end up very quickly imagining a dog reacting to the high pitch sound or a child reacting to the high pitch sound. Now, why can't we do that? Why can't we imagine beyond the highest pitch we can hear?
Pushing Sensory Limits
00:33:31
Speaker
I mean, presumably because it's using the same part of our neural network for the imagination as is used to observe the sounds. Yeah, but we can extrapolate in other areas. Can we? why not yeah no Can you imagine new colours?
00:33:45
Speaker
Well, that's always the classic one, isn't it? no i I think it's the same thing, like, you know, like, pictures beyond my ah ability to hear pretty much the same thing as colours that are beyond my um ability to see. And I guess I can only imagine. Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is you can extrapolate from component parts that you can experience. So ah you can imagine an apple that weighs as much as a car. That's not too difficult, even though that doesn't really exist.
00:34:15
Speaker
they're component parts that you can add together from normal experience. I think because with weight it's such a scalar quantity, it's just adding more to what's already there, whereas sounds and colours, they're very much categorically different, they're qualitatively different, and I don't know what it would look like to have a violet that's more violet than violet. I'm trying to imagine what ultraviolet is going to look like, and i've just I just see violet. Yeah, or nothing. Or nothing, exactly. Yeah.
00:34:52
Speaker
I'm now imagining a society that pays as much attention to weight as we pay to sound pitch and has loads of art forms based on the exact weight of objects. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Well, the other thing you could do is you could remap the visual cortex. So you could do all of normal visual wavelengths and we reduce that just to red. And then you can expand out the others to the other colours, but you're just remapping. It's not really saying it. Yeah. I want to ask about profantasia next. OK.
00:35:21
Speaker
what's What's the difference? So profantasia is the word, I think it's afantasia, meow, coined. It's not a very official word yet for imagining something not in a separate imagination space in your mind, but in your actual vision in some sense, although you're obviously not actually seeing it. So a way of thinking it, we've got the overly negative word hallucination.
00:35:43
Speaker
and it's like a conscious, actively chosen hallucination. So what's the actual difference between imagining something and imagining something profantasically? What's it feel like? So we can do this with an apple as well, right? So I can imagine an apple and it's on that plate in that room, the bright light.
00:36:02
Speaker
But I can also imagine an apple in front of me on this cushion, and as I imagine it, it sort of plonks down as if it's been spawned in the computer game, and it deforms the cushion, and it's lit as if it was lit in this room. So it's like AR. It's just like it's appeared there. But it's solid, because I can imagine an apple on the table, but it's just like a shadow of the colour of an apple. It's not solid. It's solid. It takes more effort to make it solid, but it is solid.
00:36:31
Speaker
Again, I used to be much better at this like because it's not really a practical use for this. I don't use it as much, but I used to be better at it. I can imagine it being very entertaining as a child. Yes. That's probably why you found less and less use for it. That's right. Yeah. So I used to walk to school and in the playground, I'd imagine giant dragons smashing out the pavement and setting fire to buildings, occasionally eating children. That was fun.
00:37:00
Speaker
don't need that so much these days. thank yeah so And these looked like they were really dragons there. Yeah. And they would swirl through the sky and breathe flame come out of their mouth. Absolutely. And it was like you were actually seeing them. Yeah. And did that require lots of concentration? Well, my brain wasn't doing much else. So it was was happy to entertain me doing that. Yeah.
00:37:27
Speaker
so So Vin, if you imagine an apple on the table in front of you, like how solid is it?
Vivid Imagination Techniques
00:37:32
Speaker
I can see through it. It's not opaque at all. Can you make it more opaque? Yeah. can you you put out another four seconds yeah could try, but it doesn't seem to want to become more fake than it already is.
00:37:50
Speaker
yeah thanks gu It does of effort. And just bringing this back to like a previous episode we did with someone who practiced this kind of meditation technique called fire casino. It was really interesting. Her name's Jane.
00:38:07
Speaker
And she was able to basically imagine things that were opaque and superimposed on her normal vision. um And I thought that was well beyond anything that I was capable of doing. But she said that she worked on that for a month and didn't have it before that. And so it suggests to me at least that it's a very trainable skill, especially if it only takes like a month to get to her level.
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I think aphantasia just means you haven't done it much. I think most people can do hypophantasia or normal phantasia with just a little more effort trying to do it. I think the thing is it's not really often that useful. So you don't need to do it. Yeah. We know from brain injury stuff, there's a tiny percent of people who actually can't do it, but I think most aphantasics could train to do it better. Yeah.
00:39:03
Speaker
And what practical uses, you still do get pro-fantastic things in in your day-to-day life, but do you like stuff like when you're playing video games, you get overlays? A little bit, yeah. I mean, I don't use it that much, but again, if you're playing like a first-person shooter or something and you're throwing a grenade you might get little dots or dotted lines to show you where it's going to go and I can put on top but I think it's more efficient to just conceptually get it rather than overlay it so I don't use it that much. Oh but because actually you could have that in your mind's eye not in the pro-fantasic world so you could just overlay like a not solid dotted line
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, and in that situation, I'm not sure what the difference is exactly, because if you're watching the computer game and overlaying it, in what way isn't that profound? And if it's a dotted line anyway, it hardly matters if it's not solid or not. Yeah. So have you imagined you guys being anything else? This is a game I used to play as a kid as well. Like not being human.
00:40:16
Speaker
Like being a cat or something. Cat, a chair. A chair was an interesting one for me. I thought that was fascinating, being a chair. I don't think I've ever done anything like that. No. Again, not many practical uses, but it is. I'm thinking of the rocks and everything everywhere all at once. Oh, yeah. And how hard I found it to imagine being two rocks talking to you. But they are quite, they are quite animated, those rocks.
00:40:47
Speaker
I'm talking about a chair. Imagine being a chair. You've got four legs, a base and a back and all the sort of pressures going on there. And then someone sits or your cat jumps on you. Can you imagine any of that?
00:41:02
Speaker
No. I should be able to, because I can feel what it's like being the person in the chair, which is surely just the reverse force of what the chair feels of me being sat on it. Kind of, yeah. So I ought to have an idea for how strong it feels to have. And I know what it's like being a chair with a cat sat on me, as it were, because a cat sat on me. Right. I know what it feels like to have someone sit on my lap, but yeah as a human, not a chair.
00:41:30
Speaker
And if you tried now, what would happen? I mean, you can go down to details in like how the fastenings between the legs and the base work, whether it's glue or nails or whatever. And seeing how that changes, how you feel about things. If you spent like five seconds thinking about being a chair, what happens?
Imagination as Self-Perception
00:41:52
Speaker
This is good radio, isn't it? Five seconds, people thinking. Can you do this, Burbank? Yeah, yeah. ah Like I say, I used to do it.
00:42:02
Speaker
h And you can think of different kinds of chairs, you get a different sensation. Yeah, because the the different the legs have different surface areas and contact areas, so they feel different. And you imagine are you does the chair have any senses other than kinesthetic, like a physical touch? It's only pressures and contact. so And do you feel pressures between sub-parts of the chair, like I feel pressures between bone different parts of my body? yeah
00:42:34
Speaker
Again, accuracy, no idea, probably not that accurate, but it's an interesting little game to play. And do you think if you were like a furniture designer, you would do this? I don't know. You'd have to ask one. Find a good one and see what they do. I imagine they do that a bit. Car designers imagine they are the car because when you drive a car, you kind of become the car. So it's not so far different from the user experience. Right. Yeah.
00:43:03
Speaker
I mean, that's an interesting thing is in itself, isn't it? When you get in a car, you have a strange conceptual spatial understanding of how big the car is so that you don't crash into things. But you can get quite close and you almost feel, when you're getting really close to hitting a post because you're reversing or something, you almost get a feeling, don't you, of how close it is. It's painful almost. It's like, yeah, like you better bang your arm. or Yeah.
00:43:31
Speaker
So itd be yeah, how how far can you take that? Are there people who have this sense in extremes and people who don't have the sense at all? Probably. I think I can imagine this. Yes, I think this is like sort of an extension of proprioception, where you feel the car as an extension of your own body, such that if you're moving it in a certain way, you can feel it as if it were your own body moving in space. And the more
00:44:03
Speaker
at one you feel with your car, the more unified you feel with its body, the the better you can like navigate your way through space with it. see that's That's quite odd though, don't you think? You've suddenly got into something and your body almost disappears and you become the car to some degree unless you take your focus off it.
00:44:24
Speaker
I feel like it's a lot easier for me to do this with a smaller field so but bikes, it's easier. I feel myself completely becoming the bike or with like skateboards or ice skates. With cars it's a bit more difficult because you know there are these big bumbly things and so it's a little bit more kind clumsy but I imagine if so someone were driving cars all day and you know were more skilled at it than I were then they probably could become one with the car. sort of like let's yeah I would say it was the opposite for me I think skateboards and bikes I feel very much like a human on a bike whereas a car I feel more like the car
00:45:11
Speaker
Interesting. Oh, okay. I can't imagine being an articulated truck. That's too big for me to imagine being. It's too big. Yeah, and I don't know how it would articulate particularly. It's a problem the size of the articulation. Both. Whereas a car, because I've driven a car enough, and sometimes I've got like at one with a specific car,
00:45:37
Speaker
I can imagine being the car much more easily. So it's an experience thing again. This is making me wonder if imagination is any different from just being as well because because clearly when we get into a car and we become the car, we're imagining being the car because we're not actually the car. So are we just imagining being our own bodies all the time? Yeah. And we know we're imagining our vision.
00:46:02
Speaker
all the time because it's reconstructed it's not actually we're not actually seeing what we see directly we're seeing a reconstructed copy of what we see well this comes down to a sort of what is you thing right so i mean if you chop some of your hair off that bit of hair that you've just chopped off is no longer you but it was it really you in the first place because you couldn't sense it and um if you you know you can reduce it down all the way there's a there's a lovely ian bank's culture novel where an AI mind is getting attacked and it has to retreat into its brain more and more and more and discard little bits. And that's, Ian Embanks is incredible. I think I got a lot of my imaginations starts from reading his books and other books, ilk. Which is the book with the brain? I think that's considered fleabus, I think. We'll check it and put it in the show notes. yeah
00:47:01
Speaker
So this kind of reminds me of some other fictions I've read as well, where the idea of a self or like the self model that we imagine ourselves to be gets extended into tools or appendages much in the same way that we might do it for cars and by default we are doing constantly with our bodies and it reminds me of that time when I lost my phone
00:47:36
Speaker
and how I feel like I've a part of myself just amputated because so much like my sense of self just being channeled through my phone in a way that you know if I had like cut off my hair it wouldn't be as consequential but like losing a foe and that's like losing a a limb almost yeah and it's just like such a strong sense of self that's like concentrated in that that thing I don't know what about you have you like ever felt such a strong connection to things and feel amputated by having it not with you anymore
00:48:16
Speaker
I think the phone is the most common one, isn't it? if everyone feels and It's especially odd growing up without mobile phones and then having them and then becoming so much part of your life. I mean, for me, it's not particularly a big part of my life unless I go out. Going out is, you know, you need a phone to contact people and make sure that they're going to arrive at the same place. Whereas before you just say, I'll meet you here then. And if they weren't there, you'd never meet them. That was it. There's no backup plan.
00:48:44
Speaker
So, yeah, I do I do understand, especially with people who grow up with mobile phones, that it feels like an extension of them and maybe more them than their bodies in some sense, because they're interacting so much through it socially and all the communication is through the phone. And especially in times of Covid. Again, it becomes that thing of your becoming part of the thing you're manipulating.
Tools as Extensions of Identity
00:49:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:12
Speaker
yeah your concentration, it's like drumming or other music instrument instruments as well. When you're in the flow, you become to jump to an extent that instrument yeah or almost you're an extension of the instrument rather than the other way around because it wants to do something and you're listening and it channels through you. You're both like agent and tool of each other. yeah Yeah. So this is why I have developed the ability to dream in text, to basically have such a powerful like textual imagination. It's because I'm like constantly on my phone all the time and especially like on Twitter, ah such that whenever I'm dreaming it's not just
00:49:59
Speaker
plain text that I'm seeing. It's also the Twitter text box and but the the blue button to the right. And whenever I go over the like the word limit, it becomes the text actually becomes red. That's how I know this is like Twitter. I'm so Twitter-brained. And it's just like, as you said, we become the tools that we manipulate and in return the tools like manipulate us. So it's kind of like this interpenetration of agencies.
00:50:29
Speaker
Yeah, I wanted to ask about the agency of the tools because the smartphone has more agency than like a kitchen knife and and can somehow control you a bit. And then in the more extreme, something like, because it's in the context of Burbank, I just saw his cat go past the moment a bit ago, like a cat is not the same as it you know a tool that you're using, but there's some extension of self.
00:50:55
Speaker
huh with ah a close friend or a partner or an animal, a pet. Yeah. I think the more we think about ourselves as processes that are hooked up to senses,
00:51:10
Speaker
the more sense it makes because we're, as humans, we've got our normal human senses, but phones give us an extra sense, almost an extra limb that we're connected to and cats and humans and all sorts of other things give us emotional extensions.
00:51:26
Speaker
Oh, so a loved one is an emotional extension and in the way that a car is a run faster extension. You can think of it that way. I mean, yeah, I mean, there's different ways of thinking about your own thoughts as well. So and where does your, thought there's a big discussion about LLMs at the moment. And the thing I keep hearing is it's just guessing the next word. Well, how do you know you're not doing that?
00:51:56
Speaker
If you analyze where your sentences are coming from, if you backtrack it, backtrace it back to where that came from, where do you get to? So I just said, where do you get to? Where did that come from? I can try and look back. It gets quite dark quite quickly. I don't know where that goes, where it comes from. I mean, obviously it's coming from a lot of experience and memory and interactions that I've had in the past. But yeah, how how different is that really from an NLM?
00:52:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's an underlying, I have an underlying neural network that I can't perceive that has a simulation of the world in some sense and memory and understanding of what's happening and the words like emerge from that.
Language and Thought Processes
00:52:38
Speaker
But yeah, the mechanism by which the words emerge from the model is definitely just a, yeah. But is it a hard break between your subconscious and your conscious or can you work back more and more and more if you have put effort into it?
00:52:53
Speaker
I think I've always assumed it's a hard break, but I'm scared. vin I feel like you could always push back um because this is something that I've noticed I've got better at, which is of being be able to consciously choose words, but also when I'm not paying so much attention to it.
00:53:13
Speaker
especially this becomes more apparent when I'm public speaking just to let the words flow automatically and make sure that it just comes out in a fluent string of words doesn't matter what I'm trying to like put together never mind if it's like perfectly chosen or not it just as long as it's smooth and fluent it gets the job done and I find that it happens automatically and that's change over the years. The more public speaking practice I do, the more like voluble the words get even though it's not quite as like precise as I would want to make it if I had more time writing it down.
00:53:54
Speaker
um And so in a way, I'm very much like an LLM in that sense, because like um there's like a subconscious part of me which is like predicting where to come next and just like quickly putting it on before faster than my thoughts can like ah think about it. so yeah So I don't think I have that to that degree. I mean, you were talking about having a flow when you're lecturing or talking. I don't think I have that to any great degree, and I'd like it because it's a very useful thing to have in this society.
00:54:24
Speaker
ah Again, I think it comes from practice. I don't talk a lot. So I don't get better at it. So it'd be another interesting thing would be, can you can you think about how you got better and put that into words? And another problem is not everything is Englishable. So there's lots of experience that you can't translate into language. And that's a problem as well. And we're all talking in English, but there's a lot of imply meaning in know a lot of things we've said and we're each going to get a slightly different bias on that and people listening to this are going to get a slightly different bias on it as well. Yeah, it's a it's a difficult interface to get a lot of nuance through. It's much better if you just say,
00:55:12
Speaker
we're going to fight that castle over there. That's quite clear. yeah but When you're trying to explain inner models of mental consciousness, then it gets a little bit trickier.
00:55:24
Speaker
So someone who has, we know from Holbert's descriptive experience sampling that there are people who spend 70% of their time using their inner voice. he And it seems likely that if you use language in your internal thinking that much, you're going to be better practice. So when it comes to speaking, you might be better at speaking than say, you're using visual imagination and smell imagination more often.
00:55:48
Speaker
which is difficult to communicate, which is a problem. I'd like to talk more about Vin's imagination with the the Twitter feeds. So when you're dreaming Twitter feeds, are you having conversations with yourself? And when you see the text, do you properly see it or are you conceptually aware of its meaning? I think it's a little bit of both. It's becoming more, I can properly see it. But the default would obviously be, you know,
00:56:16
Speaker
I can conceptually sense the meaning, but sometimes, and quite a lot of the times actually, I can actually visualise the individual characters. Because like it is in a box, after all. It is in a Twitter box. It does go over the word limit. It does become red as a result of that. So I am literally seeing the imagery of it. Does it appear in one block as if it's been tweaked, or do you write it out?
00:56:45
Speaker
I don't think I write it out. I think it's just it's there and i like my brain's just like producing it, which is a hell of a lot more convenient than having to fiddle with my thumbs. But when when it becomes red, do you edit it in your dream and make it so you can tweet it? Or do you just get like emotionally annoyed you can't express your thoughts in 180 characters? Because it's my dream, I don't think the character limit actually does anything. It's there. I can just like ignore ah the the fact that it's gone of gone into the red and just continue like pouring my thoughts into it. What conversations do you have in your dreams?
00:57:23
Speaker
Oh, I don't know. I can't really remember that now. But like, my I think it generally takes the form of like the regular tweets that I have, which is basically just like bite size, like thought nuggets or whatever. And I just like how to put stuff out. Yeah, they're very much brain parts. You don't journal your dreams or anything like that. I try to. I definitely have done. I was more diligent about it in the past, but Yeah, these days I don't really do that.
Dream Content and Subconscious Exploration
00:57:54
Speaker
So you don't know if your dream tweets have revealed anything that your conscious mind doesn't know? Oh, no, I haven't really looked into that yet. So the answer is no at the moment. Because I think one of the things I like about dreams is it's potentially a link to your subconscious and your conscious linking them up. And Jung did a lot of work in this area and he's a fascinating chap.
00:58:23
Speaker
with his active imagination. And he had this thing where he could lucid dream at will. And one thing he did, which is incredible, is if a character would visit him in his lucid dream, he wouldn't let them leave until they told him why they were there. I wish I could do that. My cousin would lucid dream. I always find that a very fascinating ability that she always had. I used to be able to lucid dream. Well,
00:58:53
Speaker
i didn't I wasn't born able to lose a dream. I learned how to lose a dream, but then I realised how costly it was to like have like poor sleep and I just decided, you know what, it's fine to know didn not lose a dream and just like let the dreams come whenever they want and not have complete control over it. so i just like let that ability slide. But if I had continued down that path, I think I would have been far more like skilled at being able to control my my dream state or whatever. Wait, so if you lose your dream, you're more tired in the morning, like the rest wasn't as good. Yeah, the rest wasn't as good because like I think it is REM sleep. yeah And that's all like these like dream checks you have to make sure you're doing throughout the day as well.
00:59:40
Speaker
Yeah. So I used to have lucid dreams as a youngster. And then I stopped having them. And then I trained myself in the same way you did. I had them for a while. But then they got quite terrifying because I could not ah no longer tell if I was actually dreaming or not.
00:59:58
Speaker
Because I had sort of an inception thing where I'd wake up from a dream, but I'd actually still be in a dream. Oh, that's terrible. That's terrible. That was terrible. That won't be much for a while, but I'm still interested in it. So do either of you try to do this in the day? Because you can both imagine a scene or imagine a story or read a book and imagine something.
Active Imagination and Emotional Expression
01:00:19
Speaker
So do you ever try to do the young thing of letting your imagination be more dreamlike while you're awake? I personally haven't done it.
01:00:28
Speaker
bank cor but I think it takes too much effort. yeah So the active imagination thing that Jung specifically talks about, I think you have to have almost no sensory input to do it when you're starting out at least, because it takes, it's not so much effort, it's almost non-effort, but that's an effort in itself. You have to wait for the images to come for you while not falling asleep and it's yeah tricky.
01:00:55
Speaker
because but yeah Because most meditation practices, they're telling you not to imagine anything. yeah Whereas this is the opposite. Well, no, it isn't. I think active imagination is sort of a weird boundary between the two. So the way I understand it is you close your eyes and you look into the dark as if it's 3D, but you don't actively project anything. And then you wait for your brain to create images. That's what I try and do anyway.
01:01:27
Speaker
But it's not easy. So it does sound like a parallel skill to meditation, but with a different focus and but similar concentration and patience needed. yeah Yeah. Sounds about right. But do you think you can do that with other senses, like allow audio to arise or allow emotions to arise? yeah Yep. You're saying yes, Vin, like you've done it. Yes, I think I have done it. Which one? Letting things arise.
01:01:57
Speaker
and you get but more you yeah and you get audio or emotion more easily than video? Okay, I think emotions definitely come much, well, slightly easier, but they're pretty much the same, I would say, because like I'm not doing anything. They're coming of their own accord. and So between the three of them,
01:02:24
Speaker
you know, these three different things, sounds, visualizations or emotions. Do you ever get tweets that just appear? No, I do get video, sorry, I do get ideas that need to be tweeted, like, unbidden, but not like visualization. That only comes, like, very rarely in Dreams.
01:02:44
Speaker
I love how you said needed to be tweeted. Yeah. They they need to be tweeted. What happens if they don't get tweeted? Then I get constipated. yeah to Previous generations needed to eat food and now in the smartphone area people need to post on social media.
01:03:06
Speaker
I always just get clogged up. you know The same thing is true for like emotions as well. like If an emotion starts bubbling up, I need to feel it. Because if I don't feel it, then I have to suppress it. And that can turn ugly. and yeah
01:03:22
Speaker
There's this wonderful thread that I read somewhere on Twitter where like ideas or emotions are like like feces. It's like shitting, where you have to like basically shit it out. Because the more you keep it in, the worse it will be for you like your system. And that's exactly what it but it is for me. You have to like let it out. I have to like have little brain parts here and there. But every now and again, there has to be a total dump and just release it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't have that so much. But I understand. Any other topics you want to cover, Burbank?
Humorous Imaginations of Apples
01:04:02
Speaker
No, I don't think so. I mean, there's a whole list I sent you of things that we've gone through most of those. I mean, yeah, I think another funny thing would be to imagine what you could do with an apple. So can you make it appear in front of you with like sparkly effects and can you make it have an English accent and a monocol and a moustache and talk to you? i don have I found that question really funny because like I don't know what that means for for an apple to have a British accent.
01:04:31
Speaker
or any action in the first place. Yeah, yeah. That's why I've been fascinated with this for such a long time is, you know, how far can you push your imagination in different directions?
01:04:48
Speaker
Because when it gets the monocle, it starts moving and it becomes a cartoon apple with little arms and legs. And the monocle, it's squinting to hold the monocle in, which distorts the apple-y-ness. It's the face cartoon and the apple, a real apple, or is the whole apple a cartoon? The whole apple becomes, yeah, it all becomes a cartoon for me. Does yours? No, it stays an apple with a cartoon face.
01:05:16
Speaker
That sounds weird. That would be a weird show. I'm just imagining my apple with like the face of Jesus or something on it. And it's very much an apple, but it's just got one of these weird, paranoia things. where Like the chewing shells. Yeah, exactly.
01:05:38
Speaker
Does it have a beard? A beard on an apple seems wrong somehow. It doesn't have like a beard made of hair that'd be weird it's it's got like etchings of like hair right sorry etchings of a beard yeah so wait Burbank is your monocle well lit or is the monocle cartoon lit?
01:05:58
Speaker
me I'd say it's a halfway house it's got sort of cartoon glinting on it when it moves around so you can have a dynamic renderer where parts of the image are photorealistic and parts are cartooned I can make the whole apple cartoon I just haven't decided to
01:06:17
Speaker
I just choose what's best for the what I want at the moment. What kind of British accent does it have? um Like a lord. Like a really posh one. That's right, yeah. Quite quite an old lord.
01:06:34
Speaker
And can you imagine like a Cockney apple? Yep. Very different face though, very different face.
01:06:47
Speaker
And you're hearing it, right? The accent. yeah Which is just a mind-blowing thing to me. The cockney one's getting quite angry that I'm looking at it. It's got a personality as well. It's got a personality, oh yeah. Oh yeah. I think as soon as it gets a monocle, it gets a personality.
01:07:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:11
Speaker
Great. Thank you very much, Burbank.
Conclusion: Apple Imagination Exercises
01:07:15
Speaker
Thank you for having me on. This is a fun episode. I hope you enjoyed as much as we did. Absolutely. Yes, thank you.
01:08:03
Speaker
That list might be interesting for people to look at as well, to see if they can do those apple exercises. Oh yeah, we could put a list of apple exercises in the show notes. That's a fun idea. Yeah, good things to do with friends and family as well. Great fun to do with kids.