a thaumaturgical compendium

So you may have noted that Mattel is getting a little bit of guff over their Dom Barbie, to add on to the general problem of the doll’s body mold. On the other hand, Barbie is breaking gender stereotypes with the “I can be” career series. Who knew women could be baby doctors or art teachers?

But where is Big Law Barbie? Mattel says that kids don’t care about their mothers’ legal careers, but I find that hard to believe. So, I introduce to you “Big Law Barbie,” who can defend against mass torts while baking massive tortes.

Big Law Barbie comes with a briefcase (wound up being too big for the box), that when squeezed, says “Ouch! That glass ceiling really hurts.” There’s a video up on flickr, along with various shots. Below is the back of the box, for more details.

I’m interested in this new guitar from Moog for a few reasons. First, I’m curious as to how it will affect music: will we be hearing this instrument to a much greater extent? Given that similar music could be produced in post-production or digitally, why is it that this will happen? Is it a question of defaults?

I’m also wondering about the loss of creative instrumentation. If virtuosi performers on traditional instruments (not that electric guitar is “traditional,” but it is far more traditional than a desktop computer) become more rare, will there still be people who develop instruments like this?

Finally, there are lots of people inventing musical instruments: a kind of makers’ market of such beasts, both using electronics (including circuit bending), and using either constructed or found physical objects (like buildings!). With rare exceptions, these tend to be played only by their inventors, since the sunk cost in learning to play a new instrument requires some common cultural value that can be exchanged. By evolving an existing instrument that is widely known into something that produces a different musical effect, does this encourage greater diffusion? I think the answer is clearly “yes.”

This is so cool. Yes, Melodyne has been around for a while, saving vocalists from their own flatness. But what really makes this interesting is what it means for samples. It’s hard enough now to detect the use of a sample, as it is folded, spun, and mutilated. But at what point does it stop being a sample. Obviously, the phrasing of the original instrument remains important, but at some point, you’ve chopped the original up so much that it isn’t really a “sample” any more at all?

I mean, if you “sample” a paragraph from a book, and don’t cite it, you’ve clearly plagiarized, but when you take single words from someone, you clearly haven’t. Musical notes are not as discrete as words—the phrasing of a note by a violinist, or even by a pianist is fairly unique—but once you get down to the note-by-note level, it starts to feel a lot less like sampling.

At first, I wasn’t sure this story was real: a 28-year-old Coloradan went under the knife so that he could have pointier thumbs. That way, he is better able to use handheld computers, including his Blackberry. It seems like a fake story, to be sure. Probably because it is.

But what makes it interesting is that it is plausible. After all, people choose to have Lasik eye surgery, and there are stories about having toes removed or shaved down so as to fit better into high heels. As body modifications go, adding something for efficiency just doesn’t seem that strange.

Right now, bionics are really meant to replace or supplement failing parts, like Cheney’s implanted defibrillator. But an increasingly common cosmetic surgery in China severs the bones in the leg in order to add boosters, and increase the overall height. Pitchers have been having surgeries that allow for more strength in their pitching arm for some time. I have a congenital problem with a pair of teeth, and at some point will have them replaced with titanium implants. My dentist assures me that because these are screwed into the skull directly, they will be considerably more resilient than “real” teeth. Were it not for the expense, risk, and pain, I can see having major joints—particularly a shoulder injured in a motorcycle accident many years ago—replaced with titanium, just to give me a slight everyday edge.

And I haven’t even touched the chemical alterations. Sure, we all know that steroids are bad for us, but there are a host of drugs, from HGH (did you know it is used for weight loss?) to Provigil, that are being used for body hacking. And need I mention the little blue pill and its cousins? A lot of people on the drugs front, not surprisingly, are amateur hackers, in the tradition of Prof. Leary.

I suspect it won’t be too long before we start to see amateurs willing to do surgery. It will start light, like self-chipping (inserting subdermal RFIDs and other subdermal devices), and move on to other small implants. As do many, I suspect that this will be a major source of medical tourism in the next few years, though perhaps the destination will not be Chiba. Although bioDiY is heating up, I suspect it will be a while before we see self-surgery as getting its own magazine (Make, Craft, and Cut?).

Update (8/11): As Jeremy notes below, body modification has been going on for cosmetic reasons for as long as humans have been around. This includes things like tattoos, scarification, piercings, implanting foreign objects, and the like. (Actually, dental implants into the skull have a much longer history than just the recent titanium versions.) There has also been a rise in DiY and self-inflicted cosmetic surgery, especially among those with various body dysmorphic disorders. Although I am interested in body modification for form, I am more interested in function. I think that this is relatively new, on the amateur side. I also expect that because the expertise is difficult to develop, most of the experimentation on this front will happen in places like India, which is already developing a strong medical tourism industry. Of course, some of it will also come from those in the body modification culture, who already have some practical experience in amateur surgery.

Hey fellow New Yorkers—this looks like an interesting (free!) talk this Monday…