TITLE: A Day with Camouflage Scholars
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: April 22, 2006  7:07 PM
DESC: 
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I am spending this day uncharacteristically, at the
international conference
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/camouflage-conference/">
   Camouflage: art, science &amp; popular culture</A>.
As I've
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2006-01.html#e2006-01-25T18_07_08.htm">
   written before</A>,
UNI is home to an internationally renown scholar of
camouflage,
<A HREF="http://bobolinkbooks.googlepages.com/home">
   Roy Behrens</A>,
who has organized this surprising event: a one-day
conference that has attracted presenters and attendees
from Europe, Australia, and all over the US, from art,
architecture, photography, literature, theater, dance,
music, and graphic arts, as well as a local mathematician
and a local computer scientist, all to discuss "the art
of hiding in plain sight".  I am an outlier in every
session, but I'm having fun.

<A HREF="http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/387">
   Marvin Bell</A>,
the Flannery O'Connor Professor of Letters at the
University of Iowa and the state's first Poet Laureate,
opened the day with some remarks and a first reading of
a new poem in his Dead Man Walking series.  First, he
chuckled over his favorite titles from the conference
program: "The Case of the Disappearing Student" and
"Photographic Prevarications" among them.  My talk's
title, "NUMB3RS Meets The Da Vinci Code: Information
Masquerading as Art", wasn't on his list, but that may
be because my talk was opposite his favorite title.
It is worthy of enshrinement with the
<A HREF="http://www.invisibleadjunct.com/archives/000394.html">
   all-time great MLA titles</A>:
"Art and the Blind: An Unorthodox Phallic Cultural
Find".  His remarks considered the ways in which poetry
is like camouflage, how it uses a common vocabulary but
requires a second look in order to see what is there.

Thankfully, my talk came almost first thing in the day,
as one of three talks kicking of the day's three parallel
sessions.  As you might guess, this was an unusual audience
for me to speak to, a melange of artistic folks, with not
a techie among them.  What interests them about steganography
in digital images?

The talk went well.  I had prepared much more than I could
use in thirty minutes, but that gave me a freedom to let
the talk grow naturally from plentiful raw material.  I
may write more about the content of my presentation later,
but what is most on my mind right now are the reactions of
the audience, especially in response to this comment I made
near the end: "But of what interest can this be to an
artist?"  As I was packing up, a Los Angeles architect and
artist asked about 3D steganography -- how one might hide
one <EM>building</EM> inside another, either digitally or
in real space.  A writer asked me about hypertext and the
ability to reveal different message to different readers
depending on their context.  Later, another artist/architect
told me that what excited her most about my talk was simply
knowing that something like this exists -- the idea had
sparked her thoughts on military camouflage.  Finally, on
the way to lunch, two artists stopped me to say "Great talk!
We could have listened to you for another 30 minutes, or even
an hour."  What a stroke to my ego.

For me, perhaps the best part of this is to know that I
am not such an oddball, that the arts are populated by
kindred spirits who see inspiration in computer science
much as I see it in the arts.  This has been my first
"public outreach" sort of talk in a long time, but the
experience encourages me that we can
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2006-02.html#e2006-02-24T14_30_54.htm">
   share the thrill</A>
with everyone -- and then watch for the sparks of inspiration
to create the fires of new ideas in other disciplines.

I've done my best today to attend presentations from as many
different media as possible: so far, poetry,
<A HREF="http://null-lab.com/">
   architecture</A>,
literary translition (yes, that's an 'i'), photography,
<A HREF="http://www.tarynpackheiser.org/">
   dance</A>,
painting, and neurobiology; coming up, language, music, and
math.  The talks have been of mixed interest and value to me,
but I suppose that's not much different from most computer
science conferences.

Some thoughts that stood out or occurred to me:
<UL>
<LI> Natural camouflage is not intentional, but rather the
     result of a statistical process -- natural selection.

<LI> Children develop a resentful attitude toward most poetry
     in school.  They distrust it, because the meaning is
     hidden.  Common words don't mean what they say.  Such
     poetry makes them -- us -- feel stupid.

     Do computer science courses do this to students?

<LI> One poetry presentation was really a discussion of a
     couple of poems, including
     <A HREF="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171336">
        So This is Nebraska</A>,
     by
     <A HREF="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4965544">
        Ted Kooser</A>.
     One member of the audience was a Chicago native who
     recently had moved to rural Iowa.  The move had clearly
     devastated her; she felt lost, disoriented.  The depth
     of her emotion poured out as she described how she did
     not "get" Iowa.  "But Nebraska (Iowa) is so hard to see!"
     Over time she has begun to learn to see her new world.
     For her, the title of poem could be "So <EM>This</EM> is
     Nebraska!".  She has had to learn not to resent Iowa(!)

     I think that introductory computer science courses disorient
     our students in a similar way.  They are drowned in new
     language, new practices, and too often 'just programming'.
     How can we help them to see, "So <EM>This</EM> is Computer
     Science!"?

<LI> In a single talk this afternoon, I learned about
     <A HREF="http://www.lacma.org/islamic_art/eia.htm">
        abstract Islamic art</A>,
     <A HREF="http://www.ece.uncc.edu/research/clean_room/engr1202/celltowers.html">
        cell trees</A>,
     and -- my personal favorite so far -- the
     <A HREF="http://www.slingking.com/">
        SlingKing</A>
     (tm).  Two thumbs up,
     <A HREF="http://www.slingking.com/Letterman/letterman_launcher.html">
        sez Dave</A>.

<LI> "Translition" is a creativity technique described by
     poet
     <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0884481492/">
        Steve Kowit</A>
     in which one playfully translates a poem written in a
     language one doesn't know.  Like other creative writing
     techniques, the ideas is to write down whatever crosses
     the mind, whatever sounds right at the moment.  The
     translitor plays off sounds and patterns, making up
     cognate words or any other vocabulary he wants.  He is
     bound to preserve the structure of the original poem,
     its layout and typography.  We did some translition
     during the session, and some brave audience members
     (not me, even being a
     <A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2006-04.html#e2006-04-20T18_54_02.htm">
        recently self-published poet</A>)
     read stanzas of their work with Norwegian and African
     poems.

     Okay, so I'm crazy, but how could I turn this into a
     <A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2005-01.html#e2005-01-24T10_01_44.htm">
        programming etude</A>?
</UL>

This is an indulgent day for me, frankly.  I have a list of
500 hundred things to do for my job -- literally -- plus a
hefty list for home.  My daughters had soccer games, piano
lessons, and babysitting today, so my wife spent a bunch of
time running shuttle service solo.  It's a privilege to spend
an entire day, 8:00 AM-8:30 PM, on an interdisciplinary topic
with little or no direct relationship to computer science.
It's a good thing I don't have to worry about getting tenure.
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