amplification – the neoscenes/tech-no-mad (b)log ::

4 : May : 202219 : March : 2024

place: Cedaredge, Colorado

quick comment

sotto voce to brainstorms on the question of people’s music-listening habits: I reflected obliquely on this question in my dissertation, examining the concept of radio as a cultural ‘amplifier’ operated centrally (more or less) with the effect of inculcating cultural sameness and diminishing cultural idiosyncrasy — the technology aiding in the ‘formation’ of a collective social fabric. I find that, broadly speaking, there is a continuum along the axis of people who seek difference and those who avoid difference. I also have friends who are still listening to a narrow selection of music that they first were immersed in in high school. And others who are still hunting for new and interesting (to them) things to listen to. It’s a curious phenomena, but I believe related to those two basic factors — the imposition of the effects of a (variably)-centralized technology on a social system, and, again, individual capacities to accept or reject (or just be comfortable with) difference. (And, yes, Ari, it’s not about ‘better’ or ‘worse’, imho, just difference or sameness.)

(And, the over-riding question of capitalist profits on cultural production buried in the middle of the pile of “stars” that we are routinely presented with through those amplification machines) …

12 : May : 20181 : August : 2018

place: Golden, Colorado

feedback and amplification

The basic mechanism at work here is the feedback loop: cause leads to effect (an ant finds food, and deposits a trail as it returns to the nest), then that effect becomes a new cause (that trail attracts more ants), which then leads to an amplified effect (they lay down their own trails, recruiting more ants), ad infinitum. Feedback loops can be divided into two types: the desirable kind, known as a virtuous circle, such as when ants leave stronger and stronger trails to a food source; or the undesirable kind, called a vicious circle, like when a microphone is placed too close to an electronic amplifier, which allows minor sounds to self-amplify into those terrible, high-pitched shrieks familiar to any concertgoer. (Scientists used to poetically refer to the latter phenomenon as a “singing condition”; today, we simply call it feedback.)

Moor, Robert. On Trails. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2016.

Moor is a bit sloppy here — the ad infinitum is not so useful, and, indeed, masks the energy cost of feedback. Communication is the selective collecting, ordering, and directing of energy. Production of pheromones by the organism — as a means of coherent intra-species signaling — is energy-intensive, so that their use impacts (in this case) the individual ant’s overall viability. This in ‘sacrifice’ to the colony. What role does this individual subjugation to the collective play in human existence, and what is its form?

9 : May : 201513 : June : 2024

place: Boulder, Colorado

Full dissertation text: The Regime of Amplification

Well, I guess it’s about time to put the PhD dissertation text out there in .pdf form, so, here it is (PDF download):

The Regime of Amplification

Have at it, be polite, no grabbing, pushing, or shoving. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate. If you can prove that you’ve read it back to front, I’ll buy you a bottle of Herradura Añejo Tequila*, as long as we can split it!

*this is my hard liquor drink of choice since 1980 when it was hard to find even in the US southwest — cherished bottles imported into Iceland (bought in NYC at NY Liquors on Canal Street, the only place in NYC that carried it!) would last up to six months, like a fine Scottish whiskey, small glasses for sipping — none of that brutish slugging down shots or making margaritas with this fine distillate.

18 : October : 20145 : April : 2023

place: Prescott, Arizona

The Prototypical Amplifier

[ed: This text is excerpted from the first chapter of my dissertation, sketching a relatively technical picture of an amplifier, and its relation to energy flows. It sets the technological image of an amplification system, and for me, it’s not clear how a non-technical person copes with such a text! How else might the same information be communicated?]

Amplification is a fundamental process that is applied or applies to portions of the vast range of what may be understood as [electrical / electromagnetic / electrochemical] energy flows that are available to living organisms. An electrical energy flow or current is the movement of charged particles. Currents are essentially modulated by causal changes — they have certain measurable characteristics that change in time — and may consequently be called signals. A signal has characteristics that are described as a wave structure of a certain frequency and an amplitude corresponding to a certain strength. As a signal, a current also has a certain coherence that is an observed quality of (subjective) recognizability or usability. Amplification is an operation performed on an incoming flow of [any form of] energy or signal that generates an output signal with an increased total energy content (gain). more “The Prototypical Amplifier”

8 : July : 201429 : December : 2023

place: Prescott, Arizona

life feels raw

It feels terrifically raw in the moment: precarious, transitory, the inverse of epic, bound by tiny details.

Remember to breathe while gaping at the encroaching Void. Want to feel alive? Stare it down. To give force to this act, it must arise in acquiescence to all forms of resistance. Give way.

It doesn’t matter, recall is gone, mental decay leads to be-ing in the present only.

There are the ongoing international conversations that are happening, most notably on the empyre list where I have a forum to surface a number of ideas around The Regime of Amplification. But the issue comes up about whether I should simply send out copies of the dissertation (or my post-submission working copy that I play with on occasion). Traditionally, a PhD would take the dissertation text and ‘turn it into’ a book published on some university press. Given the content, style, and subject, and my distinct lack of time and ability to chase a publisher, this in not likely to happen. So, why not just distribute for free and distribute widely? I’ve rarely stuck with ‘tradition’ anyway, although the thought of somebody out there ‘stealing’ my ideas is … disturbing.

13 : October : 201113 : September : 2024

place: Boulder, Colorado

Meaning of Information Technology

David invites me to take over for him while he is away to Europe for a media festival in Kracow. He’s teaching a course in the Atlas / TAM (Technology, Art, and Media) program called “Meaning of Information Technology.”

The Meaning of Information Technology (MIT) is the introductory course for the Technology, Arts and Media (TAM) program at the ATLAS Institute. MIT provides an introduction to a range of topics in information technology, new media, and digital culture. The goal of this course is to enable you to think critically about the impact of technology on society, industry, and government. This course considers what it means to be active citizens in a networked digital age. It will consider historical case studies in past IT adoption, unintended consequences and futuristic predictions. It will examine the search for authentic information, whether in digital imagery, search engines, viral video, or sound formats; IT’s modification of our social behavior; and of our means of gathering, interacting with, displaying, and using information. We will consider who we are and who we become in social networks, online games, and in virtual worlds. Most fundamentally, the class explore the question of what it means to be human in a rapidly-changing world. This question will lead us to examining the writings of theorists, the observations of those on the “bleeding edge,” and view-points ranging from neo-Luddite to Utopian enthusiast. We will draw our own educated and thoughtful conclusions, based on a wide range of evidence, and each of you will emerge from the class with an understanding of and agency in your relationship with Information Technologies. By the end of the course, you will have acquired an awareness of the rapid expansion of new technology, and you will have begun to think critically about the implications and impacts of new technologies.

Short seminar sessions, large classes make it tough to stimulate discussion, but I think they did fine in rising to the occasion. I did put out a tremendous range of concepts in that brief time, but … Not knowing names or not knowing individuals feels like a handicap, but the ending vibe is good.

I started the second session with a single projector showing a blank BBEdit file and at the beginning of class I started typing in the file with my back to the class. I slowly generated the following text:

I thought I'd start this way, to explore the inherent separation and alienation caused by technological mediation induced or driven by techno-social systems. I have my back to you. You, as a group, are talking quietly amongst yourselves.


It's 11:01 by my clock.  So, this *IS* the beginning.  I have a sense of being nervous as to what our engagement will bring in the next hour, but as an open potential, we have many possibilities. The system that we exist within—at this moment in history—is such that the possibilities for face-to-face human encounter are decreasing, gradually being replaced by greater and greater levels of technological mediation. This process of mediation changes the qualities of human encounter deeply.
It's quiet now, it seems that you have focused your attention on my screen-mediated presence. I can hear the air-conditioning drone under the artificial lighting. Are you staring at me or my expression?
There are many pre-cursor 'tele-' technologies that have incrementally increased the 'distance' between humans—communications technologies are the obvious examples—but there are a wide variety of technologies which have precipitated both subtle and monumental changes in human contact: food production, reproductive and medical technologies, those involved in warfare and economics, and so on.

What ARE the effects of these changing levels of mediation? How do they affect the qualities of your lives? What technologies most affect your existence directly? Indirectly? Let's see what range of answers we can generate in the next 85 minutes and in the days following.

Silence gradually increased while I slowly composed each sentence, correcting spelling errors and such. When I was done, I turned around to kick-start what turned out to be a good discussion (although I talked far too much for my liking — as I tend to do in a time-limited situation). Last week, I had David ask them to pose five questions about the assigned text (which was the clunky Regime of Amplification text as the primary input for the week. Unfortunately the class wiki (deployed on the goingon.com platform) is not public, as I fielded and answered most of the proposed questions. They ran a stimulating and largely thoughtful gamut and did reveal some weaknesses in the text (the overall one being the density!).

30 : January : 201114 : December : 2019

place: Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, Massachusetts

Monday, 30 January, 1961

Wrote the first two pages of a note to JFN on “Proposal to Provide Ways & Means to Generate Guidelines for Orderly CCIS Development and Integration.” This mt’l comes hard. Am expressing the point of view that a feedback model, based on a single thread, with a single center first, leading to “n” centers, would constitute an appropriate developmental simulation.

Talked with Jack Grenell on the phone re: the pictorial computer for cockpit use. He agreed with the text I already had.

(evening) Typed letter to Senator Monroney in final form.

JHH suggested that my lack of fidelity in the radio system might be due to a faulty tube in the output stage of the power amplifier. Finally got around to checking this at 10 PM; pulling one tube made no difference in the output.

Put the letter to Senator Monroney in final form.

4 : January : 201128 : February : 2022

place: Prescott, Arizona

road :: amplifier / the difference?

The amplifier/road difference would sound something like this:

I defined the amplifier as a concept which exists at many different scales and in both ‘natural’ and human-dominated systems (though that particular dialectic is a problematic one). It is a system which concentrates (and by default attenuates) energy flows. It is a defined set of pathways for that energy to flow along. (a life-form is an amplifier!)

(As an example, fundamental physical laws, such as the set of principles—gravitational attraction, strong/weak nuclear forces, EM radiation, thermodynamics, etc.—’govern’ the process of stellar evolution and ‘supply’ the ‘protocols’ for the ‘expression’ of Light energy (radiation) in a highly specific and concentrated form (compared to the availability of that same energy in any random location in the universe).

In essence, humans are simply harnessing these physical laws to form their own pathways of energy flow. Indeed we can do nothing else, as these laws govern the entire observed and implied universe. So the difference between the amplifier and the protocols that ‘define’ it may only be question of articulation — that is, those physical laws, in human terms, simply exist (for us to discover and articulate over time). The protocols arise as humans initiate articulations of the extant energy flows within which we simply are. So the protocol is, again, merely, a human (socio-linguistic) reduction of observed and extant phenomena. We cannot do anything counter to those phenomena that those laws are ascribed to. However, using these reductive protocols/formula, we set up a wide variety of sub-systems which, cumulatively, are our techno-social systems — complex systems of re-routed energies. As soon as energy is re-routed, you have an amplifier situation because you consequently have a concentration/attenuation of flows. An amplifier is perhaps merely the condition of the existence of a concentration of energies. (this does get into the question of the role of, for example, gravity as a ‘protocol’ which drives the coalescing of energized matter in the universe — or is gravity actually increasing the entropy of that matter?)

12 : October : 201012 : October : 2024

From The Regime of Amplification to The Road

[editor: this document was used for a mid-way doctoral assessment at the University of Technology Sydney and no longer reflects the final content of the PhD dissertation as of the April 2012 submission at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The presentation was accompanied by the video that is posted at the end.]

Abstract

The DCA project “The Road” is a psycho-geographic perambulation through a web of personal, social, and universal trajectories which form a new knowledge-base on the cosmos as an entropic system of energy flows. Within this worldview the project explores human presence, encounter, and interaction including a close look at the effects of techno-socially prescribed protocols on those indeterminate flows of energy. As a multi-modal online data-space, the project offers a variety of navigational strategies connecting a rich variety of audio, video, text, and image sources from the candidate’s extensive personal archive of creative material.

Introduction

The armature for this DCA as originally proposed was the concept of the amplifier. An amplifier is essentially a device that takes an incoming flow of energy (signal), and through an influx of power, generates a defined outflow of energy with a greater (directed) intensity. The amplification process needs an independent energy source to increase the signal strength. It also requires a set of protocols that guide the flow of energy from input through output: a coherent signal is a controlled energy flow as defined by applied protocols.

The road, as an expression of a techno-social system (TSS), exemplifies, or, more precisely, is one of these protocol-defined pathways. It was this realization during the last year of research which shifted my focus from the amplifier to the road as both a real and metaphoric concept that opens a rich space for inquiry. The road allows the TSS to express amplified energy flows along its protocol-defined pathway. It is not difficult to conceptually extend the idea of the road as any pathway for the directed and concentrated expression of energy of a TSS. more “From The Regime of Amplification to The Road”

10 : May : 201011 : June : 2023

place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

end of the road

Start to try making time-lapse sequences from the immediate surroundings. Lousy and/or old equipment, a quasi-functioning power system, and the results show it. Add a portable generator, a better tripod, longer cabling, a 3-CCD camera with chip memory (ah to be free of tape!), and a laptop with a battery that lasts longer than the start-up sequence. I’m ready to cash in some of my retirement piddle to cover it. Maybe $10K I could get away with all of it, including a decent audio recorder? That, along with a better 4WD truck and I’d be part of the pseudo-elite for once. hah. So, anyway, now, marooned in Echo Park by the intense weather, (I was warned, fair enough, but I told the ranger that I wasn’t planning to come out until Friday next at least, anyway, so things should dry up by then, and that I had enough supplies for at least two weeks if not more). Stormy already today, late morning, humidity pulled the clouds up, and while attempting some decent time-lapses, it gets worse. What else is new? Maybe I end up sitting in the car just writing. There are rain filaments across to the north.

Cutting tamarisk growth behind camping site (#7) to feed the fire. Keeps mind busy, with flinging sharp blade biting into hard wood. No help around in case of an accident. This sharpens the wits. more “end of the road”

28 : November : 200930 : January : 2020

place: Ultimo, NWS, Australia

controlled or dynamic processes?

Do humans (life-forms) exert control over environments by modifying flows to help them re-member and stabilize their forms? To form them in a way that resonates within their energized neural storage regime (life-form)? Probably not, as from a bio-thermodynamic point of view, life exerts control (simply) in order to deplete energy gradients (according to the authors of Into the Cool, an exploration of NET (non-equilibrium thermodynamics) and its relation to life/living systems).

Or can this even be considered a control process, this interaction of modifying flows? Or is it merely part of the cumulative (dynamic) process of life as an engagement of the entropic/negentropic fundamentals of the universe?

I realized that in Regime of Amplification I got the terminology a bit wrong — focusing on the anisotropic concentration and rarefaction of energized matter as the fundamental condition (as driven by gravitational forces). When it is the gradient between the two situations which is of primary interest and importance. — a bit similar to seeing only the elemental yin and yang instead of the overarching dynamic unity, the taijitu. So, a rewrite is in order — to look at the transitional state rather than (theoretical and limited) end-states.

28 : October : 20094 : June : 2022

The Military

(extracted and edited from The Regime of Amplification)

The second example — though it is a much more complex combination of pathways in its geo-political and material deployments and in its interaction with the overall continuum of relation — is foundational to the TSS (techno-social system) and is also a prototypical expression of amplification. It is even more a prototype than radio. Radio is merely one sub-system of what is ultimately a military organization.

A military system incorporates all the requisite patterns of an amplification system: input signal (the human population and other concentrated energy sources available to the TSS); amplification process (provisioning and equipping of the select grouping of people through the collective life-energies of the greater population of the TSS); the feedback system (communications, command, and control systems); and the output signal (the expression of amplified (and directed) energy flow as a campaign to secure the viability of the TSS either by offense or defense).
more “The Military”

21 : October : 200924 : December : 2016

ant(s)

Latour’s network(s) of relations (in ANT) are complexifying descriptors for a multiplicity of flows where each actor in the network are the origin and recipient of various flows. Or, they are merely the nodal locales of concentrated flow (as conscripted by the social structures). Again, back to the observation that the structure of the social is the prescription that forces flows into rarefied and concentrated zones or pathways. Each attenuation (measured in relief to a ‘natural’ background flow) becomes an actor in full, constant, and distributed relation to at least some other points in the field. The theory, the image of a multiplicity of flows, taken to a near-infinite limit, a beyond-multiplicity, an infinity of nodes would then approximate “reality.” If the network is functioning properly — that is, constructing a plausible account of real social systems — the network will be “an expression to check how much energy, movement and specificity our own reports are able to capture.” (Latour) Those reports, though, are always reductive and incomplete. A map locating the nodes and noting the flows across each one is not the lived territory in time, nor does it accurately express the character of the flows, which in the end are more important than the nodal points.

Is this blog a report? If so, the question becomes how it might more accurately invoke the territory of inquiry. [indeterminacy, trans-disciplinary (discipline being “mortification by scourging oneself”, yikes!), without genesis or terminus, and sampling as many strands of lived-impression (not just screen-mediated living) as possible.]

If network is an accurate description of a situation then a consideration of the order that the network imposes on the situation is called for. Network and order, (including Latour’s actor-network) is about the application of a decodable order applied to a diversity of actors within the object of study. It implies reduction, though hints at an ever-expanding point-of-view. It is couched in language (report, correspondance, academic paper, speech, communications) which is problematic, but this limit is applied to practically anything social. Order is rooted in the negentropic tendencies of life in opposition to the entropic character of all non-life. (Depends — is an accretionary disk of stellar matter, through gravity, rising as anisotropic presence of order as the star forms negentropic, or not — is there any fundamental (ordered) difference between varying (relative and Cartesian) densities of energized matter?) The biggest problem with most current usages of network is that very often the nodes are well-defined (to a fault), as are the geometries of connection, but not so much the qualities of the flows between. I’ll have to pay attention to that lack as I troll the literature. There is the (network) engineering efficiency approach which examines the issues around signal transmission and reception including power usage and signal/noise ratios — which are inextricably linked to amplification issues.. But the efficiency is determined after the fact of the signal being strictly defined by existing protocols.

ack! my usage plunges into a cesspool. the Jekyll and Hyde of free-style and efficient. faggeddabouddit!

23 : September : 200921 : March : 2020

code and money

Michael Bauwens on the iDC list:

I think the important insight that travels from free software to money is this. Power lies in the code and in the invisible structures that enable or dis-enable actions and relationships, what Alexander Galloway calls ‘protocolary power.’ The great insight of the current age is that money has a code as well. But just as we do not have the power to change the code of microsoft, we do not have (yet) the power to change to code of political money, so the alternative world-constructing route is to peer produce our own, differently coded money.

sotto voce: This brings up the thought that code and money are both likewise abstracted representations of Power that have to be actualized through two processes: 1) a participatory social grouping who choose to believe (have faith) in the power of the abstraction to cause material change in their lived existence and 2) a means for the abstracted instrument to interface with a real (material) regime of existence. Power, in the end has to be or has to have available a way to apply itself to life, to an individual life, to be delivered (as that change).

For example, code describes what a device can or should do in theory. It needs the device to make that actually happen. Code without the physical transmission of power (kilo-calories, joules, megawatts, whatever) is a complete abstraction and is of no consequence. The machine or interface that actualizes the code is embedded in a specific field of power flows — i.e., the electrical generation and delivery system, manufacturing systems that depend on transportation networks which depend on hydrocarbon fuel power, etc. This larger techno-social infrastructure that is essentially a field of directed energy flows depends on a whole host of humans believing that the code will ultimately improve their lives on earth. If there arises a doubt that the code will do this, the whole system starts to unravel. If it becomes clear that the code is failing to bring power to the user, they will stop putting their life-energy into propping up that techno-social protocol and the infrastructure it is embedded within.

The code of religious teaching, the code of social behavior, the code of the machine, and the code of economic instrument all have the characteristic that they are completely dependent on being actualized this way, else they have NO power. In the end, the code is merely a socially prescribed pathway along which real energy is forced to flow.

Faith in code(d abstraction) produces a shared or centralized capital of potential power, but there always needs to be a tangible means for translation from code to be-ing. The body is the primary means for code to become lived action or the source of applied and energetic change. That would be the minimum device necessary, all other devices are simply amplifications of the body-as-energy source.

With the demonstration of faith as an applied and directed energy flow through a code comes the often terrifying expression of directed social power. On the other hand, when the individual participant in a social system seeks and finds/makes expression not according to The Code, the dominant collective immediately loses a fraction of its ability to direct energy as it wills.

9 : April : 200922 : November : 2024

place: Arrastra Mountain Wilderness, Arizona

bush-walking

Today, after that small amount of moisture in the night, the entire place is vibrating. When standing still, there is a loud and continuous background buzzing that is non-specific in source direction. Standing near a particular blossoming plant, there is the sensation of particular bees and other insects doing their thing, but otherwise, there is this background humming that has no point source but rather simply is — like the hissing of blood in the ear.

On the way in to Sycamore Spring both times, I note the existence of a lone Cottonwood tree growing up in the middle of a lightly sloping alluvial fan below a sizable unnamed mesa. The only possibility for a Cottonwood to be there is water, and plenty of it. A good objective for a bushwhack. After the numerous encounters with slithering and rattling things yesterday, attention to movement and especially foot placement becomes aligned with breathing. Of course, any movement has to be calculated when in such an environment. Miscalculated movement will be punished by some extremely sharp and pointed object intersecting and likely penetrating the body wall. I escape these four days with only two of those painful encounters, both arising in the thin slice of time between a visual scan of upcoming terrain and a glance at some specific object within the field of view. Then aiiii-shit! as the pain jolts upwards from compromised shin.

This bushwhack takes me to the Cottonwood. It looks to be around a hundred years old, there are a few other water-seeking plants, a tamarisk, rooted in a whitish rock ledge. Apparently some near-surface water is available. Paradise in the shade under the tree. Except for the stench of death which I trace to the desiccating corpse of a cow 20 meters away in the scrub. The shifting wind brings eye-watering wafts on occasion, but otherwise I spend an hour or two soaking up the energy of being under the lush green canopy surrounded by hard-core Sonoran desert. It is a singularity like Sycamore Spring on a smaller scale and with no running surface water.

Minuscule F/A-18 fighters are frequently dog-fighting in the airspace above. In the day and night. Moving in and out of unaided vision, tightly circling each other, dropping flares, and, with afterburners, roaring in such volume that all ambient sound is swallowed. For our nation’s security. So it goes.

Otherwise, commercial flight contrails gradually fill the sky with high-level cirrus clouds that soften the terrain and its re-radiative impact, but this effect diminishes the Light of the desert — and with that, its nature; along with distorting the energy flux among the organisms living here. They did not evolve with spent jet fuel clouds hanging overhead to shade them from the burnishing sun. This is a problem. Just another problem that the human species have applied through their amplification system — this is the waste product, waste energy, which alters the environment.

The rest of the day is a slow and rambling return to base. Run across some small mining digs, one trenched into a pegmatite dike that includes some coarsely crystallized black tourmaline with its classic trigonal (rhombohedral hemimorphic) cross-sections. Someone has tramped this land, and in the hunt for extractive wealth, has, literally, left no stone un-turned. The West is everywhere scarred by these digs from small two-meter test pits to the massive kilometer-wide open-pit gashes. That mineral bonanza, that natural ‘surplus’ regime drove and still drives the development of the West. Straight north of here about 15 kilometers, is the Phelps-Dodge copper/molybdenum open-pit monstrosity. Without which, well, as the old Colorado School of Mines bumper sticker suggested — Ban Mining, Let the Bastards Freeze in the Dark — the developed world could not exist.

4 : April : 200914 : November : 2015

place: Prescott, Arizona

burp (gun)

An army marches on its stomach. — Napoleon

as if this is enough to justify the concept of energy usage and amplification: it is precisely these fundamentals which directly illustrate the connection between collective energy resource regimes and, in this case, the amplified energy projection potential of militaristic social structures. the balance between the starvation of the general population and the full bellies of soldiers is a core decision of those controlling a nation-state. think North Korea, think Soviet Union, think any state.

30 : November : 200812 : December : 2015

thesis proposal :: Basics

Title

Sonic Presence Within The Networked Regime of Amplification

This research explores the relationship of (sonic)energy to social be-ing, technology, and the consequent possibilities for creative action.

Subject

Sound is energy, sound carries energy. Sonic energy is a product and a by-product of life. It forms one expression of organismic presence. It is one particular energized expression of our band-limited life that developed its particular characteristics through evolutionary processes. These processes are essentially structured around variations in the (spatial and temporal) concentrations and availabilities of energy. As one such expression, sound is employed as one means through which humans enhance their survivability. Amplification represents a particular model for what is essentially a life-process that operates on various energy flows, modulating their basic characteristics. How human collectives generate and interact with sonic energy governs a wide swath of their consequent techno-social interactions. This research is a distributed exploration of sound as a carrier of energy between the Self and the Other — as it is mediated through the globe-spanning network of techno-social amplification systems. Specifically, it will be a critical exploration of our contemporary techno-social terrain through the application of this model in a variety of creatively energized situations.

Outcomes

Formally, outcomes will include the dissertation, live/online performances, workshops, a blog, festival participation, and conference presentations. Through developing an energy-based model that amplification provides an armature for, it is my hope that this research will generate a powerful tool for analyzing and understanding the dynamic affects of technological systems on creative human engagement at all scales. This knowledge will be applied to facilitate actual situations for this engagement to be explored.

Keywords

amplification, sound, (sonic) energy, power, technology, techno-social systems, networks, continuum of relation, dialogue, collaboration, presence, sustainable creativity, social action, entropy, thermodynamics

30 : November : 200829 : December : 2023

thesis proposal :: Background

Background for Research

While individual human presence in this world has fundamental repercussions on be-ing, it is the ever-present and synergistic exchange between humans — forming what I call a “continuum of relation” — that governs much of life. This energetic field of human relation is sometimes fraught with difficulties and complications in spite of the rich and necessary dynamic it brings to life. Technology, as a ubiquitous factor in mediating human relation, often dominates while presented as providing the only opportunity for mediated connection and interaction between humans.

Presence, as apprehended by the Other, circumscribes a range of sensory inputs that require energy (from the Self) to stimulate and drive. The efficacy and sustainability of human connection builds on the very real and tangible transmissions and receptions of energy between the Self and the Other. An interconnected plurality of dialectic human relation may be described as a network. These networks, made up of a web of Self-Other connections form the base fabric of the continuum of relation. Technology appears in these networks as the mediating pathway that is the carrier of energy from node to node, person to person. Technological systems also appear to apply absolute restraints on and attenuation of the idiosyncratic flows inherent in that continuum of relation. The discrete objects that populate the (technological) landscape of the continuum of relation and that modulate the character of communications are literally artifacts of a materialist point of view. A primary assumption in my research is that a materialist or mechanistic view of the world no longer suffices to adequately circumscribe the phenomena occurring within the continuum of relation. more “thesis proposal :: Background”

30 : November : 200812 : October : 2024

thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts

Concerning Particular Methodologies

Dialogues, Networks, and Collaboration — Much of my creative practice, research, and indeed, presence is built on the activation of robust and sustained dialogues with a wide range of Others both remote and local. These dialogues form a network. The most powerful situation I can imagine for creative research and production is an open human network. I am keen to engage on the ground with the Australian, Sydney-based, and UTS creative community. I am familiar with the milieu, having been in Sydney for six weeks in 2006 as a visiting artist at COFA, and I very much look forward to being there again. I have an extensive personal/professional network of Antipodal creatives which dates back to the early 1990s that I will be pleased to activate on a more face-to-face basis.

Distributed Performance — My own applied international research in distributed performance and tactical media over the last fifteen years is centered around synchronous live network-based social activities. Engaging a wide range of technical solutions, my work is a direct utilization of amplified digital networks as the locus for creative action. These areas of research experience include a variety of performance-based activities in theater, dance, sonic, and other expressive arts occurring in or augmented by collaborative networked situations. As a self-proclaimed networker, an area of core awareness in my research is the concept of presence — and how that human presence is directly and indirectly affected by any/all technologies that filter and attenuate that presence: how human expression across a network system is precisely formed and informed by the impression of the technologies used.
more “thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts”

21 : November : 200814 : July : 2024

place: Berlin, Germany

welcome to the tech-no-mad space

You have stumbled upon the next forking evolution of the original neoscenes archive and network presence. In 2008 it subsumed the entire neoscenes travelog that began back in 1994, five years before the term blog existed. it rolled over to a frames-based site in 1999, and then to a php-based site in 2004, and now onto WordPress as of 2008. it is now extending the timeline with images, audio, and video from the analog neoscenes archive. what’s this 1958-1963 “50 years on” material? it is one dimension of the use of the (b)log as the accompaniment of the text of my PhD thesis which touches on many of the topics surfaced here combined with my creative media practice. there is an evolving about page which contains more background on the whole project. contact: jhopkins at tech-no-mad dot net.
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NEW FROM THE ARCHIVE
adding IRC logfiles from various projects and events; performance documents like Changing the Course of Nature, Open Air Radio Barcelona, and DEAF03 – Interfacing / Radiotopia / Keyworx. also in the process of adding some of the thousands of scanned black&white negatives that cover a period of time from 1976 through 2000 when I quit wet darkroom work. (a few (84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95) of the 4000+ portraits that are slowly migrating to these pages). will be including many fragments like that over the next months to enrich the overall blog experience, so stay-tuned here for new announcements. of course, there are always new field recordings for the aporee maps project and the accretionary .50 calibre sacrifice series.

12 : June : 200811 : October : 2024

place: Berlin, Germany

The Regime of Amplification: A Primer

[ED: This text is essentially an extremely preliminary draft—written in Berlin, Germany in 2007-08—of my dissertation The Regime of Amplification.]

I decided to release this text in advance of any hard-copy publication, with another chapter nearing its final stages, and several intermediate chapters forming more concretely. The following is the original ‘final’ text, although there will be a significantly improved one in the years to come.

This speculative essay addresses the process of amplification which expresses itself at a wide range of scales and affects and which models a fundamental aspect of all human presence. It opens with a brief description of a prototypical amplifier, then frames life as the coherent self-organizing expression of energy embedded in a universal field of energy flows. It examines simple biological models of amplification and suggests possible reasons for amplification processes to exist. Narrowing its focus, it looks first at the human species, then the body, and then the collective social system as an operative field of amplification. It subsequently explores the Regime of Amplification as a general manifestation of the prototypical TSS (techno-social system) — a system whose goal is to maintain the viability of localized sub-sets of the species in the face of competition as well as continuous and universal change. Two specific examples — the radio and the military — are presented to simply illustrate the principles suggested. The conclusion reiterates the affects of techno-social amplification on individual be-ing as well as on the entire continuum of relation that the individual is a part of. It suggests some fundamental pathways of action which have an immediate detrimental affect on the hierarchic flows of the Regime.

This essay is built on the subject of one chapter in a book-in-progress titled “Energy of Being :: Dialogue of Creativity” which explores in greater depth many of the issues that are danced only Lightly around here.

KEY TERMS

TSS (techno-social system), Regime of Amplification, energy, amplification, attenuation, flow, continuum of relation, life-energy, life-time, evolutionary development, natural selection, self-organizing, radio, military systems, resonance, social energy bank, life-time=energy=life; attention=life-energy=life-time, feed-forward system, biochemical amplification, concentration, rarefaction, command-and-control … (to be continued)
more “The Regime of Amplification: A Primer”

12 : May : 200811 : October : 2024

place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

ascending

holiday in Netherlands, Ascension Day. internet goes out. just after figuring things out with the next day’s schedule. meeting tomorrow with Carmin, Rob, Geert and Linda, uff.

several times, friends in Europe have expressed the sentiment that they should be allowed to vote for the next US president. I don’t blame them.

in a cafe. pretending that I am a normal tourist. visiting this place on a week’s break from the job. shaky premise. Chinese tourists, comfortable in their own skins, progressing to world dominance. while Amurika founders in scarce 225 years. street musicians sing “if you’re going to San Francisco, make sure you have some flowers in your hair…” or so. he’s Amurikan, maybe 40 years old. maybe more, maybe less. who knows. age becomes less knowable or even contemplated. as day after day there is yet another blank page let lie, while pretty girls smile and rub their lover’s backs. tattooed arms intertwined. and what of life trajectory, how it goes? year overtaking year. while an older guy sits down at the next table with a baby-fist-sized spherical knob on the top left side of his head. bulbous. the tattooed gal shows the dimple in her lower back to her lover. they kiss. each second of eye contact they have, I age a year. slowly sinking into anonymous senility. nothing to do but stare down the far horizon, if it could be seen at all here in the City, to spot any sign of Death approaching. but there are too many brick buildings framing the space of Rembrandtsplein. more “ascending”

18 : April : 200829 : August : 2014

place: Berlin, Germany

teaching parameters

begin this morning sketching out the chapter Dialogue and the Other :: Protocols of Intimacy (that’s a provisional title, I came up with the protocols of intimacy phrase a few days ago, and liked it). it has a chapter-title-resonance like the Regime of Amplification :: A Primer.

this is the chapter where the core teachings lie. or where many foundational assumptions that hold up the broader teachings will be framed. it is the easiest and most difficult chapter. simple and complex. powerful and simple.

and a question pops into mind — when thinking about how I need to provide as many examples of situations to students to re-inforce the efficacy of the worldview — how is it that the teaching of ones own worldview is so different than teaching the worldviews of others. how is it that so much education is simply the mass inculcation of a canon of Others by individuals who are somehow lesser than those represented by the canon and to a grouping of individuals who have no value to the social system until they are fully inculcated. was it such that only those in the canon were truly great Teachers, and all who come after them merely lesser disciples? Or does the social system have the tendency to self-reify at the price of eliminating successors of equal or greater inspiring power? isn’t it such that any individual has some lesson to teach any Other? where is this lesson taught? it should be enshrined in a bill of human obligations (versus human rights), that any human may learn something from any other human.

31 : March : 200830 : November : 2015

place: Berlin, Germany

migrating

Last day of the month. Skipping this forum mostly because of the extent of other writing that is happening in the moment. Floods of text-framed energies, directed along one path or another.

Virtuality limits the potential for changing ones point of view. Watching a screen is, literally, a sustained process of maintaining a static point of view. This is in extreme juxtaposition to the process of primary observation of the world as moving through it.

Days are spent writing about amplification and other phenomena that arise from the unequal distribution of energy and matter in the cosmos.

Friday evening I participate in the Migrating Realities conference that Mindaugas has initiated. There will be many familiar faces there: nice. So, a brief presentation in addition to the regular act of active participation:

Window Weather: A Nomad’s View of Reality

The history of the human use of glass, the chemical compound silicon dioxide (SiO2), prescribes a novel point of view on the nature of virtuality, and consequently, the nature of reality. This presentation will sketch a history of that attenuation on individual realities and offer some views on the techno-social system that we are migrating through.

Later in that same evening, I have to remotely present for the conference panel in Savannah, and immediately after that, a live 30 minute visual-sonic set at the opening night of migrating realities. Going to be a stressful day, to be sure.

1 : March : 200811 : October : 2024

place: Berlin, Germany

the gift of cash

what could be more banal and even demeaning than receiving a gift of cash?

huh, what are you talking about? sheesh, what’s wrong with cash?

okay, that’s a gut response as I formulate the core of an essay The Regime of Amplification, exploring the dynamics of social exchange.

this is simply an attempt to frame a fundamental principle — to point out a perceived weakness in the social system. money, as an abstracted social re-presentation of life-energy, is not the thing itself, it is not life-energy. giving money is the substitution of an abstraction for the thing itself. that thing being life-energy or life-time. life-time, defined by the irreversible plunging arrow of time, is a limited commodity. life-energy is the quantity of time convolved with what it takes to stay alive for that time. it takes energy to maintain life for a certain amount of time. a gift is an infusion of life-energy (in some form!) from the Self to the Other. when the Self pays attention to the Other, the Self spends life-time and consequently, life-energy on the Other. the Self then comprehends certain forms of energy that the Other would, could need in their life. an auspicious gift is the providing of this apprehended needful energy to the Other when it is needed. money enters the picture — this abstraction of life-energy and attention — and is substituted for both of those. the Other, receiving money, has to decide how to convert this abstraction back into a source of energy. it is a lonely and life-time-consuming process. it demands of attention and and is void of directed life-energy. it is the converting process that exerts the most seductive appeal. with money one can do anything. can’t one? even to saving life-energy and life-time? not sure about that. giving money to fight poverty places the Self in a quandary.

having noted this, it is clear that operating on this principle would place the Self-Other dynamic in a certain place within the social system, whatever the exchange is. but the dependence on the abstracted sets up the least auspicious form of gift. or is it the most auspicious? uff. another hack job as the corrupt idealist, eh?

it’s probably better to make enough of the stuff on one’s own, then engaged presence can proceed on the basis of … presence alone, with the proper infusion of life-energy. and subsequently give all ones money away…

only after the last tree has been cut down
only after the last river has been poisoned
only after the last fish has been caught
only then will you find that money cannot be eaten
— possible Cree prophesy

There was an old lady, from the Cree tribe, named Eyes of Fire, who prophesied that one day, because of the white mans’ or Yo-ne-gis’ greed, there would come a time, when the fish would die in the streams, the birds would fall from the air, the waters would be blackened, and the trees would no longer be, mankind as we would know it would all but cease to exist. There would come a time when the keepers of the legend, stories, culture rituals, and myths, and all the Ancient Tribal Customs would be needed to restore us to health. They would be mankind’s key to survival, they were the Warriors of the Rainbow. — Lelanie Stone

15 : December : 200712 : July : 2016

place: Margaretville, New York

Kevin

at the ski house. fabulous. Kevin’s skis are leaning up in the deck. he is on my mind, as his absence is always amplified when in the locations where there was once presence. presence does not need amplification. presence is. as absence is not. it is a similar relation to heat and cold — where cold is the absence of warmth. warmth and heat are the presence of energy. the presence of life, of be-ing.

so, nothing lasts. and there is a return to the ever states of otherness and change. life is all that we have. cherish it. and endeavor to go beyond all possibility at each awakening day.

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
for trying to change the system from within.
I’m coming now
I’m coming to reward them.
First we take Manhattan,
then we take Berlin.
— Leonard Cohen

13 : December : 200714 : November : 2015

place: Glen Ridge, New Jersey

Bucky

waiting for the new(used) PowerBook to arrive to begin the laborious process of rolling the practice-base from the lame machine. crossed fingers for easy roll-over of software, as I have exactly none of my original install disks with me. I imagine problems, and might be forced to try a more extreme method of swapping hard drives which theoretically will work, but is sure to run into some kind of problem on the way.

The kinetic intercomplementarity of the finite Universe requires that what disassociates here must associate there. High-pressure atmosphere at one point is balanced by low-pressure elsewhere. The stars are all radiantly dissipating energy. The Earth is a celestial center wherein energies from the stars are being collected and buried ever more deeply. When after vast millions of years, enough energy has been impounded aboard our spherical space vehicle Earth — then it will become a radiant star, as the discard of other burnt-out and dissipated stars are concurrently aggregate elsewhere — some trillions of years again to become a star. No factor operative aboard our planet is so effective in aggregating, reorganizing, concentrating, and refining the disorderly resource receipts as is the human mind. — R. Bucky Fuller

okay, I kind of get it, but Earth, Inc. is pretty obscure not least because of the convoluted language Fuller uses — endless sentences of conjunction and adjectival amplification. but no references, I like that — evidence of original thinking (or un-cited plagiarism…). poems, fragments of ideas, what not. it can be done, but what impact did/does this text have on The Whole Earth?

23 : April : 200726 : February : 2024

place: Sydney, NSW, Australia

amplification, initial round

Miss a meeting with Angela, got the wrong cafe in Hyde Park, there are two. Sent a SMS, but got no response. Ended up doing more audio work — of the Salvation Army Band in front of the big ANZAC Memorial. Called her, but she must not have had her phone on.

(00:09:21, stereo audio, 18 mb)

Wandered down to Darling Harbor to sit and write about amplification, surrounded by amplified and simulated culture. Hmm, the relationship between amplification and simulation could also be interesting to explore. Where amplification is a (possible) subset of simulation. Because the amplified signal is no longer the thing itself, but a simulation of the thing itself with a change of character, volume in the case of auditory works, intensification in the general sense — the intensification of a particular neurological input signal whatever the input is. At base, electrical — as in the stimulation of the auditory nerves. So, an intensification and sometimes narrowing of frequency (bandwidth) of the signal. Simulation is also about the re-creation of an original signal — one whose characteristics are well known — a re-production of those characteristics.

The better-known the parameters, the better that the signal can be re-produced. Always a reduction, always not the thing itself. Always the reductive. Efficient perhaps, amplifying the essential. But who determines the essential? That is embedded in the technology which is a determinate (determinating) product of the social system. Therein is one source of a significant skewing factor in the presence of these amplified and simulated signals. That the characteristic of these signals are being largely determined by a dominant social system which may or may not be optimized for the individual, or for even the greater good. Because the generating system for these re-productions has a long-term directional inertia coming from the technological production process — the larger the infrastructure (the more generally and specifically) complex the social production system, the greater the inertia, the greater the inertial resistance to changing conditions, the less relevant the amplified signal is to the individual or collective itself.

16 : April : 20072 : July : 2024

place: Rushcutters Bay, Australia

pre-amped

Amplification is a primary function of molecular cascades (selective reduction of environmental cues—which are essentially electromagnetic energy impinging on sensory receptors). The process requires that an organism has a consistent surplus of energy to provide the necessary amplification of signal. Often amplification factors are in excess of 1000x in the case of optic nerve stimulation by a single photon and the subsequent processes unleashed in the nerve cell. An organism needs consistently and readily available energy source(s) to improve the possibility of survival-to-reproduction. But why does reproduction play such a big role in a discrete/single organism’s existence?—to simply continue life—or is life a continuum within which all organisms are connected by nature?

It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of ‘equilibrium’ that an organism appears so enigmatic… What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive.

Schrödinger, Erwin. What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

12 : August : 200629 : October : 2019

place: San Jose, California

polar/solar crossing #1

the last day, more lunches, meetings, panels, and sessions. of multiple form, but with threads of connection throughout. that’s the core thread, or simply the core: people. the structure of most of the collective events is the usual podium-stage-screen-VIP-amplification (who was chosen for social and real amplification?). I am only interested in the granular micro individual un-amplified events.

Steve provides this nice image from a small polar/solar path crossing in Caesar Chavez Park in downtown San Jose.

the SoundCulture presentation with Ed Osbourne, Shawn Decker, and Nigel Helyer … where the organization SoundCulture aims to be a trans-disciplinary, trans-regional, pro-actively critical platform for sound art …

sound is field-like … fluidity … formlessness … nomadic and transient … sonic everywhere (related to Light … because it is another manifestation of field energy)

sound in spaces … how to solve (or use) spatial pervasiveness of sound …

sound is one of the first inter-media areas, linking multiple practices and media

sound is vibration and relies on material

sound as environment — sustainability & architecture

sound and music — hearing and technologies, but what about music and sound difference …

comments:

overlooked as field; eye is master, ear is slave; architecture going backwards; plus sound-specific work isn’t always that way … music — the 500-pound gorilla in the room; electroacoustic; sound vs composition, etc. I commented on the possible parallels in the development of photography-as-art-form and the subsequent isolation it faced as materially-defined art form, and then a gradual realization as the digital began to make headway into its domain that photography was just another way to put a 2-D mark on paper.

finally catch up with Tapio as well, for a bit of conversation time.

head home before the SOFA street party really gets underway. don’t have the energy to keep on with it. carrying a bunch of equipment is an anchor. so, after filming some of the Latino concert action in the convention center with Amanda and Sophea, I head back to the car and the commute up 680 to Livermore.

22 : May : 200531 : December : 2023

The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks

A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor’s note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 that set life on another trajectory.]

1.0 Statement of Problem

1.1 Introductory note

Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. more “The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks”

14 : September : 200226 : February : 2024

place: Boulder, Colorado

mapping transitions

almost a month later. in the middle of a conference. mapping transitions. academic discourse. so. stream notes. what do pictues want? god is an artist. reductions (models, models, models, built on each other, intertwined. biocybernetics. science/technology making bio-sciences possible. cloning and computers. extended sense. political economy that runs the world. world of computer station, tangled wires. cybernetics: the steersman. kybernaut. writing as control system. not law, but the actual technologic/semiotic (phonetic) tools. (code writers). conflict of visual orgy and at the time of triumph of the digital (logos). analogical arguments. (dominant). terminator of liquid metal. ultimate simulator. academicians desperately searching for a label. an interpretive system to decode what the hell is going on. building a new model with old embedded pieces which have no inherent difference in structural predicate. sa-mo, sa-mo. formative paradigms are old. 1) copy original 2) artist and work (subject:object) 3) temporality (remember Virilio, huh?) 4) time of gain. uniqueness. copy has more aura than original.

enhancements of amplification (reproduction): are they qualitative improvements? reproductive cloning — an improvement?

actual and mediated. (electronic media is given a certain status of unprecedented power.) “new media.” participates in “massaged” production. mechanistic view. the aesthetics of digital media? (what about defining what the hell “digital media” is? (instead of defining it’s “fit” into the hegemonic/dominant worldview). hybrid aesthetics? why not just toss it out…? simulation. materialistic presence. current, seeking closure in the circuit. remix, unlocking input and output authenticity. (digital images and digital culture and rituals of new media). new vs traditional: imitations. virtuality. ontological status. proper character. procedural, conceptual (don’t fit…). anti-materialist. (medium is not the point). thesis-antithesis. we’re not allowed to make progress? hierarchies of form. perfection of expression. useful ways to talk about objects. (and subject experience). taste. rational cultivation. descriptive systems assume static forms of … aesthetics of change. mechanistic production. potential literature. procedural methods. with certain sensibilities. floods of wards. static bodies in space. reading texts. monolithic and reified forms of presentation. (any tweaking of of meta shakes the whole tree, gimme a chain saw). key forms of reference — generative: Pannini, Turing, Babbage, procedural, Stockhausen, and so on. iterative. new objects. rethink premises of knowledge production. aesthetics is about awareness. (iterative), step beyond — in flux. two feet in the mechanistic…

swarming

taking quantum to its conclusion — points to a movement from product to process to practice — (Saskia Sassen — the “meaning” of the activities in the digital sphere is the total accumulation of all practices that take place in that space … MAKE THE LEAP…

anthropological centrism. mapping transitions. (remembering the new world order is a limited access, top of a hierarchical high). indigenous technology. Inuit Broadcast Corporation. media-maintenance. next5minutes comes up, tactical media. good topic.

reproduction (gathering and redistribution of original energized event creates a pseudo-powerful illusion, but this is purely illusion based on the hegemonic (and static) position of the “reproducer” within an implied “global” order … the photograph in the world order (re-radiated Light from the self.) … some forms of hypertext with image are nice, but. just ’cause it’s horizontal?

Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees anyone whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den. — Plato’s Cave

caves, CAVES, and caves. technocracy. aristocracy of technology. networks of expensive, institution-oriented situations, (isolated from the Light, Light re-amplified, reflected, refracted, energized). “gotta have content.” flippant sycophant, mouthpiece of the complex. access. high-end polarity. slick-packaged technological. famous last words. manipulation and collaborative interaction. glib passing over any moral embeddedness of the power structure. fair use. attitudes of use.