the schema for the Dresdener Postplatz

radiostadt 1 : in collaboration with mechlabor and coloradio was a sonic installation in the Postplatz, at the center of Dresden, Germany, part of a large public art work, neoscenes created a live ambient stream in Real Audio from 8000 km away. in April 2004, Sven asks me to spin a text for upcoming documentation. it follows:

Thanks to the fat-pipe running from the University of Colorado research grid to the neoscenes living room in Boulder, Colorado, USA, along with access to a Helix server that the university hardly ever used for live streaming, neoscenes made about 10 major live audio/video streaming performances wearing only underwear and socks while drinking a cup of tea. (sorry, no photo's ;-) "Bring it on home!"

It's a bit strange, sitting on an office chair rescued from the dumpster parked on horrible-cheap 1980's shag carpeting, pumping out an acoustic signal to a situated live urban-drinking audience halfway around the world. How to get the groove on? The inspiration of the moment has to be local and global at the same time. The senses of the body have to pick up every shred of remote input to judge the reaction, and with only those miniscule bits of evidence plow ahead with faith in connection. "I'm thinking about you!" Concentration, attention, focus are all keywords in the process of throwing embodied energies from here to there, across a network that is defined by thin wires snaking across thousands of kilometers. Connection is where the Self and the Other actually make energized contact, whether it is bridging 2 meters or 20,000 kilometers. Neoscenes gets up early (GMT-7), studies the possibilities, brews some tea, maps out a course of action, and dives into the work-play.

First, gather stores of internal energy, then facilitate a material infrastructure, and then, with care-full intensity, send that energy out into the network.

The gathering process is critical. It starts with listening and looking while moving through life, an awareness of the surrounding fields of flow. Keeping the "be here now" above the need to re-produce history. Over time and space neoscenes accumulates a deep archive from this lived process of looking and listening, be-ing. These fragments are a very real energy bank of electromagnetic impulses waiting for the proper moment to be re-configured and revealed. It is from this archive that the remix arises. Serendipitous elements are facilitated in every performance -- unstable real-time inputs that reflect the energy of the moment. With the proper concentration, these are combined with a flow from the archive, and whatever remote vibe is coming from the receivers at the other end. It is impossible to guess the result. Except in the deep space of psycho-spiritual anticipation.

Configuring the technological infrastructure is a time-intensive and energy consumptive process -- and it's important not to run out of energy doing that, else the actual performance suffers. Fighting the technology is an old story, not a very nice one, but it comes with this kind of work, it comes with any work involving technology (which raises the question, what exactly IS technology? Well, maybe it's whatever means any human uses to reconfigure their internal energy in order to pass that energy along to an Other.) A balance between twiddling with tools and the ensuing energy loss must be precisely found. Simple = saving energy for the communicative act itself, not worshipping the binary coders. Creativity happens in unstable autonomous zones.

Finally, the performance. The flow, transmission. Point-to-point. Real time. Is the receiver open to the right frequency? Is the transmission to narrow? Where is the groove, especially when the sonic space is outside rhythm and rhyme. When it is full of Ghosts of the past. Speaking tongues gone by. From ether to ether to ether. And while passing through bodies again and again.

You had to be there. Revolution is a live praxis. But you can still be here now, in which case, you can pick up the vibe still ringing from radiostadt 1, through the trans-temporal ether.