There’s this improv group in New York called Improv Everywhere that “causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places.” On one particular “mission” they

created a living moebius strip in the Astor Place Starbucks. Seven undercover agents meticulously repeated a five-minute slice of time for twelve consecutive repetitions. Starbucks employees and patrons were frightened, confused, and ultimately entertained as they found themselves stuck, without escape, in the middle of a time loop.”

They staged a five minute “play” with several seemingly unconnected people. A couple standing in line has an argument and she walks out, another “agent” receives a cell phone call and goes to the window for better reception and so on. They repeated this verbatim for an hour and then just left.

What’s interesting about this is that the non-agent customers began seeing the pattern and anticipating the next installment with glee. Which brings up the question of our temporal capacity to find interest in repetition. In other words, what if they had done this for two hours or five or twenty four? What if this happened in every Starbucks every day? Then the meaning would change, people would not be so pleased and they would tire of the pattern.

So what part does time play in our perception of repetition? How many repetitions are too many – or not enough? Do they have to be exactly the same and if not how much deviation still “works?”

Tango is a wonderfully repetitive animation by the Polish artist Zbigniew Rybczyński. It won an Oscar for Best Animated Short in 1983. Rybczyński has apparently been having the video removed from various sites but this one is still live.

Here’s a description from Rybczyński’s site:

A child enters a room to get back his ball. Slowly, the entire space becomes filled with bizarre characters, all of them intent on repeating the same gesture ad infinitum.”

Note: Although this is a work of art it should be noted that it does contain nudity.

There is a condition called Piblokto (also Pibloktoq or Arctic hysteria) that affects only Eskimo societies living within the Arctic Circle. It is thought to be caused by too much Vitamin A of which, apparently, the Eskimos have in spades due to their particular diet. Symptoms include hysteria, depression, coprophagia (the consumption of feces – yikes!) and an unfortunate tendency to run around in the snow naked. As if that wasn’t enough for these poor bastards they can also experience echolalia which is the repetition of words that the person has heard.

Just in case this one doesn’t sound so bad check out what happened to Echo. In Greek mythology Echo was a little chatterbox of a mountain nymph who was punished by Hera for covering for the old bastard Zeus, Hera’s husband. It seems Zeus was screwing the other mountain nymphs and Echo chatted up Hera so that she wouldn’t notice (I’m not sure of her motivation here). Hera did a very clever thing to punish Echo by making her repeat everything she heard.

Echo had fallen in love with Narcissus who was only interested in himself. When Echo tried to talk to him all she could do was repeat anything he said. She couldn’t express her love for him and all he could figure was that she might be trying to make fun of him or, at the very least, annoy him. Narcissus experienced the repetition without the knowledge of what was driving it. I’m not sure the outcome would have been any different since he was notoriously narcissistic but at any rate Echo spent her final days crying until, Cheshire cat-like, all that was left of her was her voice. Take from that what you will.

Bonus: Pete Brown, the former lyricist for the 1960′s band Cream formed a band called Pete Brown and His Battered Ornaments. The day prior to opening for the Rolling Stones the rest of the band kicked him out. He then formed another band called Pete Brown & Piblokto!.

I previously did a post about a juggling troupe performing Steve Reich’s Clapping Music by juggling. Here’s a video of Steve Reich himself (he’s on the right) performing the original piece.

Steve Reich wrote Clapping Music to be performed by two people using only their hands. Reich said that he wanted to “create a piece of music that needed no instruments beyond the human body.” The group Gandini Juggling saw fit to expand that a bit and add juggling balls. Watch their amazing movie here and keep in mind that they are playing music – “The twelve note phrase is shifted against itself 12 times until its is back in unison.”

Gandini Juggling also has a great blog.

Kelly Lambert, author of “Lifting Depression: A Neuro-scientist’s Approach to Activating Your Brain’s Healing Power,” said on an episode of the radio show To The Best of Our Knowledge (listen here) that repetitive tasks done with both hands helps combat depression. Such repetition, according to Lambert, increases levels of serotonin and endorphins in the brain. She writes in her book,

…an essential premise of my proposed effort-driven rewards theory is that movement–and especially hand movements that lead to meaningful outcomes–plays a key role in both preventing the onset of and building resilience against depression and other emotional disorders.”

The To The Best of Our Knowledge episode was centered around the current craft craze. This craft movement is a good-hearted rejection of the mass-produced goods made possible by the Industrial Revolution. Such goods are repetitions of an idealized product while hand made goods are individualized and usually contain some imperfections.

In the media knitting is often the poster child for the craft movement. So it’s interesting to note that the original Luddites were a group of textile workers in the early nineteenth century who formed to protest the new mechanized looms. They named themselves after Ned Ludd who in 1779 destroyed two stocking looms to protest the loss of traditional jobs. The mechanized looms replaced manual looms which originally replaced hand knitting.

Websites such as Etsy have sprung up to market these individualized crafts. A small irony in all this is the fact that once you try to sell individualized goods you find that the making, marketing and selling becomes easier, more efficient and cheaper if you produce multiples of the same item.

Image credit

The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 was introduced by the home secretary of British Prime Minister John Major’s Conservative government. It was an attempt to curtail “anti-social” activities and, in part, raves. Raves are usually all-night parties where DJs play dance music such as House, Trance, Techno and Jungle – music that is thought of by some as repetitive. And it was through this repetitiveness that Major’s people sought to stop raves.

This is section 63-1b of the Act in which they define what music they are targeting:

“music” includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.”

Major’s efforts were publicly ridiculed because, of course, most music is “characterized” by repetitive beats (including military marches). As a piece of legislation it was considered ill defined and a product of “moral panic” (public opposition to large outdoor festivals, some of which were raves).

The Million Tap Challenge is an iPhone (and iPod Touch) app that costs 99 cents (down from its original $1.99). You buy the app, start it up and tap the screen. And that’s it. No, I’m kidding; of course there’s more to it than that. It’s a “challenge” – can you make it to a million taps? Ok, that’s it. You try to tap the screen one million times. I kid you not.

All the reviews I saw online focused, as I just did, on the insanity of the thing. But after reading a comment by a user who wrote of spending evenings tapping away I wondered what the user experience was like. But I also wondered if there were deeper waters here. What about this would capture the imagination of someone to do a repetitive task that, by one estimate, would take 3 solid days of tapping?

So last night I plunked down my hard-earned 99 cents and joined the herd (if there is, in fact, a herd). Imagetastic LLC, who develops the app, only has an email link on their web site so I don’t have much hard data on its success. From the splash screen of the app itself I can see that there are currently almost 32 million taps total for all users who chose to have their taps tracked.

Update: Here’s a YouTube video showing how to cheat with a sausage and an electric motor. Brilliant.

So what was it like? More after the jump ->

It was pretty much like what you’d expect only that text appears under each place you tap telling you (randomly): your total taps, taps per minute, your ranking, percentage done (toward the million) and taps to go. That’s all the encouragement you get to play this “game.” I was bored within 15 seconds. So what’s going on inside the person who goes for the million?

One of the comments in the App Store (where you buy it) is: “My wife was tapping for hours and got into the top screen of the leaderboard last night.” Tapping for hours? My guess is that it becomes a “Repetition Taken To The Extreme,” a term I jokingly made up here but doesn’t seem like such a joke now. We have to take the mundane to the extreme before it becomes meaningful even if we’re not sure what that meaning is. Tapping by itself is pointless, but a million taps seems to hold some value. But what?

I think it’s like mountain climbing only with the Million Tap Challenge we can mount the peak by sitting on our couches and literally only lifting a finger. It’s a minimal modern day challenge that doesn’t take brains or skill, only time and a little effort. Perfect for our modern lifestyle. We can even multi-task our way to 15 minutes of fame.

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