April 29, 2009

Blog moved on...

I've shifted to wordpress and moved over to http://www.mattjarvis.co.uk

October 08, 2008

Love Hypothesis

I needed to send this summary to someone, maybe I should have been using Google Goggles... anyway... I thought I would also post it here.

Latest conclusions in a summery by me of a chapter in Jonathan Haidt's book, the Happiness Hypothesis (2006).

Passionate love is a drug.
It's symptoms overlap with those of heroin (euphoric well-being, sometimes described in sexual terms) and cocaine (euphoria combined with giddiness and energy) [according to Julien, 1998.] And [Bartels and Zeki, 2000 with Fisher, 2004 describe how] parts of the brain are altered, with passionate love, including those parts which are involved with the release of dopamine. This is like drugs that artificially raise dopamine levels. Therefore love is like a drug, and if you take it once a month you do not become addicted, whereas if you take it everyday, you will. However the brain reacts to a chronic surplus of dopamine and develops neurochemical reactions that oppose it and restores its own equilibrium. Like drugs, when withdrawn the brain becomes unbalanced in the opposite direction; pain, lethargy and despair follow withdrawal from cocaine or from passionate love.


Does this mean nobody can stay in love forever?
Well, there is the other type of love, companionate love. Passionate love doesn't turn into companionate love- they are 2 different processes and have different time courses. There are 2 danger points in passionate love, one when you can't think straight and it burns at it's maximum temperature- this is when people can get married during the first few weeks or months of madness. The other point is when the brain has rebalanced from this crazy obsessional high. This usually happens in one of the lovers, the fire has calmed and they can now see all the faults in their partners they couldn't before. The other lover becomes confused. One of the lovers may decide the game is up, and they made decide to break up. This could be a mistake however as they would never have given companionate love a chance to grow. True love, the love that is behind strong marriages, is simply strong companionate love, with added passion, between two people who are firmly commited to eachother [These are 3 components of Sternberg's (1986) triangular theory of love]. Two graphs here (quick drawn up in MacDraft) describe the differences in the two types of love. In the 1st graph we can see that companionate love looks weak. Taken over a longer period of time however, it's the compasionate love that looks like a flash in the pan, trivial affair, and companionate love that lasts a lifetime.

September 30, 2008

Hack 'n Shop

I made a video about hacking shopping...

September 22, 2008

See you at PICNIC '08?






I've been selected to make a work about what I feel it's all about.. I've attached that video as a separate post, Hack 'n Shop.

Lost Angels Prototype on Google Android

Hey guys - for those of you who know what I've been up to with Lost Angels, check this out on the google android emulator:



I'm still working on the database at the back end, but almost there!

September 20, 2008

Team Untangle!



How to play our Team Untangle interactive collaborative game at the Media Technology Exposition in Rotterdam at V2 Institute for unstable media, July 2008

UPDATE:: Also being show at Discovery08 at Nemo in Amsterdam, Friday 26th September 2008...

September 02, 2008

Year 1.5

I have arrived back in Holland for the 2nd year of my MSc at Leiden University. Yet as I started in January 2008, it's still my 1st year.. All very strange as I'm not in both the 1st and 2nd years... I'm confused...

Anyway the year starts for me with a trip to Ars Electronica which this year is all about the Cultural Economy. This fits great with Lost Angels and the other projects I'm working on at the moment, so I'm really looking forward to it.

But my favorite part of the festival is always the results of PrixArts, the international competition of CyberArts. I always find inspiration here, and this will be my 4th visit.

Sleeping in a youth hostel with a bunch of recent BA/BSc grad students after an overnight coach trip may not be my cuppa tea though, I like nice clean hotels after business class flights, but student living is fun, I guess. :P

If you can't go though, why not check the streaming? They have live webcasts and podcasts, so jkust pop it in your iTunes!

August 30, 2008

Jowels 2.0 (Beta version of new mouth)

So I have a new Mouth!

Here is me shortly after coming out of hospital, taken by the lovely Stuart Sandford.

They broke my top jaw and moved it 4mm higher, by bottom jaw and moved it 9mm forward, then took 5mm of bone from my chin.

I couldn't open my jaw at all, it was wired shut by elastic bands... I lived on Nestle Build-Up shakes for 9 days!

I was lucky enough Matt and Vic lent me their PS3 and I borrowed a projector from Victor, so spent the last days in bed high on pain killers and lost in GTA 4!!

Ah, what a life!

Click the label Jowels 2.0 or Jaw breaking for all the pics!

August 27, 2008

Street Party





South View Cresent is the place to be today! I've not been drinking, and if you know me that is quite an achievement, regardless of Jaw Breaking and pain killers... today though, I will attempt some beer...

I only really posted this as people started asking how I look with the new jaw!

July 26, 2008

Turkey Baster


I've never loved a tool so much! With my new turkey baster I can open up my mouth enough and squeeze in all sorts of tasty foods! Wheatabix for breakfast and soups al day! Lovely!

:o)

July 24, 2008

BBQ Blended!

Matt & Vic hosted a BBQ today! Yey! I still have no energy and am recovering from the operation, but we decided to blend up 1 Potato, bacon, one of Matt's lovely home-made burgers and some Broth with a spicy sausage to flavor!

Was edible!


And you can see how my face still has the swelling, but it's going down a bit!

Check-up

I've been to have a chat with the doc's today. They let me take pics of the X-ray's they did!

So you can see the pins holding everything in place. Top jaw 4mm higher, bottom 9mm forward.

Lovely!



July 16, 2008

Operation

The operation was on the 14th July. This is me 2 days later, the day I'm leaving the Hospital.

May 19, 2008

Nan Goldin, Patrick Wolf & John Kelly


Are part of the Tate Long weekend 2008 I will be attending this weekend :o) Will update with a report after!

http://www.tate.org.uk/images/cms/small/15302w_001frencchrisatthedriveinnj1979.jpg

May 07, 2008

David Lynch :: Meditation is the key

I really liked this conference, after reading Beyond Fear (recommended by my good long-time friend SlinkyDean) by Don Miguel Ruiz - I found this stream... 

Check it out: