Interface – A SFM story
I don’t buy the idea that the father and daughter discover something as fundamental as bending space-time, tho I like the idea that they discover something. Her songs are special? Not sure that’s the ticket. Ok, but story pages are for stories, so…
Prospector, solo moving his little skiff through tumbling asteroids on the gumption of a little guitar playing. Sound in space is all transmissions, broadcasts being received. The scene starts with him playing, it’s a nondescript little room, like an outhouse. He could be staring through what appears to be a little window. Wood paneling, cozy. The familiar slides into unfamiliar – just a way to save on sets? These are places where people spend lots of time, what would be the ideal space for spending lots of time? Would it be cozy where one would memorize every whirl of woodgrain? Or blank-ish like solitary confinement?
There’s a marooned player, cobbled together an escape pod that got him / her out of a wreck and into the void. Short scene of her painting woodgrain for the stimulus, for the cozy factor. We take the woodgrain with us, all that 70s fashion on steros and VCRs was precog. The future would need woodgrain and natural patterns, stone floors, even loose beach stone – screened in perhaps? A panel slides back to access rocks for touching. The interiors are natural scapes, tech integrated with plants, stone, water. For the less affluent, pictures everywhere. Screens display yule logs burning, sunsets, ants lazily foraging – but these are actual colonies on board, not recordings or simulations – tho kids make simulations sometimes, but the shipboard environments are places of comfort, virtual screens and interfaces are totally retro, not conducive to human health – touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing are all touch (alan watts) so touch is king for health and sanity on ship. The iRock is the ubiquitous interface. So if we toss out the entire tech space paradigm of seats and control panels, what are we left with? Standing, walking, laying back, hammocks, tanks, swimming, dancing, instruments for playing, painting, all manner of creative interfaces. Typing, sure it’s there – non querty keyboards with physical buttons that push, or magnetic tickles or crunchy paper or finger sized pools of water. The question of interface is pretty important, if we adopt the paradigm that physicality is prime, especially in space travel where long periods of low stimulation could be debilitating, even toxic.
This would also mean that interfaces would not be often customized so that some ships would be unpilotable without a universal interface to plug into, like MIDI (ha). Actual MIDI ports to plug into would be a geek inside joke. If there were a universal interface, one could plug their guitar or dance rig into a paint ship.
Cowboy at a rockside campfire “What’s the difference between just playing and shipping? Well, you hear me sing and play here, right and you might like it, I might be enjoying myself – especially if I’ve got a little loving smoke and there’s a crackling bonfire by my bare feets but when I’m shipping and all tangled it’s like there’s a bonfire and green forest and rolling waves in my belly, and everything I play makes me more there. The song is the travel and the only way through is to play it true. Words notes all seem to be a river that rides right where I want to go. The gods are not scary then, they see us when we ship and smile, all is one. It’s a good feeling. But just playing is nice too.”
So the premise is that the zone of creative expression or inspiration is the frontier, where all the juice is.
I should probably shut up about this to others. This is a big universe and I need time to build it so it works and makes sense. World building.
Anyway so back to the asteroid field and our solo player. He’s navigating through, even this local maneuver is possible with playing. Each movement, blur or distortion of the asteroids is tagged to the song, the playing and movement are one. If the song pulses, then the destination pulses closer, ripples close and back. The visual is very synced to the visual. Possible to tie some visual effects to waveforms in AE?