Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

We just got back from our mini-trip. We stayed at the Fallsview Mariott which had a pretty nice view. Here it is both at night and during the day:

We started out at the casino. I don't have a problem with gambling. If someone enjoys it I don't see how it's any different than forking over money for a vacation or an opera or whatever. Money for entertainment. However, because I used to work in that industry, I find it dead boring since there's no magic in it (although I'm perfectly happy to spend time with other people who are having fun gambling, it's just not my thing). Anyway, while I was there I thought of two “million dollar ideas”:

• Detuned sound chips in slot machines. If you go to the middle of a casino (or anywhere really) and close your eyes and try and not listen to anything in particular, you'll note that there are constant harmonies at play because of the machines. I thought of two interesting things you could do knowing this:
  • Slight detuning. You know how if you're at a charismatic Christian church or a circus-tent travelling minister (yes, I've been to plenty being from a small town), they speak with a voice roll (as do lawyers, hypnotists, etc.), usually backed up by the organist. This is a trance inducing technique that puts people into a semi-hypnotic, highly “receptive” state…. (Note: if you want to learn more about this, here's a quick link)

    Churches of course use this to convert people to their religion, but anyone can take advantage of it. Now, what's interesting is just how much you can do with sound — on some levels it lets you “hotwire” parts of the brain (click here for a little more info). And don't get me started about sonoluminescence and “holy words”… ANYWAY, before I digress too far, if you very slightly detuned some of the machines, you'd induce a warble into that overall casino harmonic, kind of like the wahw-wahw-wahw you hear/feel if you're tuning a guitar by ear.
    

    "Some thoughts have a certain sound... that being the equivalent to a form. Through sound and motion you will be able to paralyze nerves, shatter bones, set fires, suffocate an enemy or burst his organs.... We will kill until no Harkonnen breathes Arrakeen air."

    The end result would be that you could, without them being aware of it, hypnotise people in the casino (hell, many seemed to be on the edge of it without help). I predict that if casinos did this, they'd see their profits go up 10% or ever more.

  • Music – This is more interesting from an art point of view than anything functional. When you have thousands of slot machines being played, they're always making noise. In addition, the machines are networked, so they all in theory could know what noise the others are making.

    Again, by slight detunings (a note or two) of the slot machines in real time, you could convert them into a massive musical instrument and literally play them like an orchestra. And the punch line is that no single player would have ANY IDEA how it was possible… It would seem like magic to the individual players since they'd see interaction (ie. no appearance of pre-programming), but their machine would still perfectly play the part it was assigned.

• Time altering video – I'm not going to describe this one too deeply because it's one I'm interested in exploring commercially. I had an idea that would allow you to take live video feeds and view them in both live slow motion (wrap your head around that one), as well as live fast motion. Basically it separates time from the equation, and allows you to perceive time as passing at any rate with nearly (about 200 ms) no latency, while it still passes for the mainstream at normal speed.