The Stephen Whittington/Yoda Connection

Take a simple yet intriguing statement such as "X is dead". Grab some technology of your fancy - anything from scissors to sophisticated text randomizing order generators. Mess up the order of the words. If my calculations are correct this gives you a one in six chance of Yodafying your text: in this instance "dead X is." What is the chance that normal text, unrandomized will be Yodafied? I'm no statistician, but I'm confident it's significantly lower. Is there something in this? The more we hear from Stephen, the more signs there are of some connection between these two great icons.

Stephen is perhaps too modest to mention the connection. Or perhaps he isn't concious of what he's doing? Perhaps Stephen's interpretation of his art doesn't include IYL (Increased Yodafication Liklihood) and it's simple Jungian synchronicity that means at exactly the same time Stephen shared his musical undertakings with the forum class, I had an independent understanding of Stephen's art in Yodafication terms?

But wait. There's more.

Stephen confessed "as you can tell I'm extremely old" 1- surely another connection between Stephen and Yoda who himself is no spring chicken.

Both great men (or whatever Yoda is) are interested in expanding minds. Yoda's got the force and all that, Stephen expresses his interest as "globalisation of conciousness".1

And both are interested in doing things from a distance. Yoda with his ear movement powered telekenisis, and Stephen through distributed music making. 1

As Luke Skywalker would no doubt agree, both can at times "sit on the boundary between sense and not making sense." 1

Stephen. May the force be with you.

1. Stephen Whittington. "Ventures in Vocoding and Distributed Music Performance" Lecture University of Adelaide 26 May 2006