"I wish that i could visit the sonic city"
This is perhaps my favorite journal entry, such a simple statement, but ultimately so powerful. There is no way to refute it, no way to break it apart. It is an intensive statement, and ultimately that's what matters. You can critique the Sonic City, rip it to shreads, argue that its immoral. Doesn't matter. Somebody wants to visit the Sonic City, maybe its a good project, maybe its just a good concept, but someone wants to visit it, and that makes it a success.
In physics an intensive property is a property that does not alter if the object possessing the property is itself divided. Heat is an intensive property, as is density. Weight and volume are not. Divide a body of water in half and its weight and volume halve, its temperature and density stay the same. It is of course possible to divide an intensive property, say by heating on part of the body of water, separating hot from cold. But this transformation requires a change in form, the application of external energy. In philosophy intensive evolves to a slightly different meaning, the univocal, something with has only one meaning. A meaning that can not be divided without the application of external energy, a change in form.
Dana wants to visit the Sonic City, we can't divide this, we can only only attempt to change her mind. With a bit of pressure maybe we can get her to change her mind, say something else, something we can break apart, divide, challenge. I'd rather not, I like the intensive.
It's the intensive that's exactly what makes the "Wild Animal Carpet" such a great project and the "Love Seat" such a not great project. You can break apart the technology all you want and never come close to explaining what's really inside Wild Animal Carpet. This is a project about sex, wild animals, noise, death and a hint of bestiality. The Max patches, server communication, piezos and pics? Irrelevant. Yes they there, but they have nothing to do with the final form other then the fact that they happened to be the tech used. There is zero technical understanding needed to understand the carpet. It could be done in Sonia with a Basic Stamp and no one would notice the difference. It could be midi triggers and a synth. The fact that this is a project about having wild sex on the floor on the backs of dead animals is what's relevant, it is what makes it intensive.
The love seat on the other hand never transcends the technology it is built with. First off it really should have been named "Ass to Ass" in homage to Uncle Hank in Requiem for A Dream. And it also clear succeeds on the level of learning how to use the xport technology. But it never goes any further, never reaches towards any level where it could stand on it's own as an object or as a concept. The story of the love seat could be told in code, could be transformed into an algorithm. Wild Animal Carpet on the other hand possesses an unreproducible quality, to its story. It could be retold and reconstructed repeatedly without the inspiration it holds ever reappearing.