West presents: Rod Summers
screening: Jeanne Liotta
Make a pilgrimage to Longmont to the Firehouse Arts Center to catch an evening screening of work by a CU Film Studies faculty-member Jeanne Liotta. I had met her the evening before at another university-sponsored cultural event. Alex had mentioned there was a reception/opening in the Rare Books Room of the Library, and, as a professional nomadic cultural participant (and observer), I thought I’d check it out. Turns out it was the effort of a Humanities class that had curated a small show of works from the collection of artist’s books that Lucy Lippard had given to the University. Strangely enough two of the pieces in the exhibition are from old friend/networker node, Paul Rutkovsky (aka. floridada). I talked to some of the student curators about Paul, Lucy, and about networking. I was lucky to have been doing my MFA at CU-Boulder when Lucy was in residence and received some of her teachings. Age brings the role of information carrier, holder of historical perspective and knowing, story-teller. No corner on wisdom, but at least some stories are related. I query the kids about what their thinking is about the use of photocopy machines as art tools. This is a very novel idea for them (given they only know the digital type of photocopy machines at most, not the old analog devices). Paper output is novel in itself. I don’t have much documentation online of some of the prior (ancien-régime!) photocopy-based projects I’ve run: just The Xerox Book that included mp3 files of the accompanying collaborative audio cassette mix, unfortunately there are no scans of the 300 actual pages … some day I’ll get to that corner of the archive & revive it in the digital zone.
At any rate, Jeanne’s work dances around cosmology, astronomy, and very much the syntax of the various filmic media she plays with — from Second Life pieces to found footage, analog and digital to Ray-o-gram-printed 35mm film stock. The sonic accompaniments well synergize with the visuals. I missed not seeing some of the analog film pieces in their original form (vs digital reproductions), as most of the pieces are (at least in part) deeply about what mediation they are conveyed upon. (Not that that aspect is meant to completely frame them materialistically: it’s only one order of correlation.) There are plenty of other resonant aspects and sources: the eclipse, the sky, the procession of stellar energies, the transposition of Light from various enigmatic sources onto halating film substrates: she always maintains an alchemical and, consequently, an experimental edge through her attention to immediate and spontaneous situation. This sensitivity is combined with an aware curiosity of phenomenon: yielding Light works that are simultaneously playful and yet connected to/suffused with an insistent and sometimes overwhelming gravity. Escaping the gravitational field of be-ing requires an empathy for the intense sadness that pervades our current times: this potential is achieved on occasion and reminded me of the intent of Bruce Elder’s magnum opus “The Book of All the Dead” and the constant struggle against the gravity of it all, in search of Light. It goes ever back to Simone Weil’s “Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.”
Jim’s artist talk
interview with Niina: art & technology
Niina has been researching art and technology for some years now. We met when I was teaching my old netculture class at the Media Lab in the University of Art and Design Helsinki back in 2000. I participated in her research for her PhD then, and … now
Ei Niina — this is all I could manage, it’s impromptu, but honest, with a bit of humor mixed in… a little complicated, as there’s no time to write an essay about what world-view lies behind the answers. You might want to reference https://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/pixel.html an article I wrote for Pixelache in Helsinki in 2007 — the same year I did a workshop there too https://www.neoscenes.net/projects/pixel/index.php
you could also check out:
https://neoscenes.net/blog/ and search on
https://neoscenes.net/blog/?s=network
or so…
even
https://neoscenes.net/blog/date/2001/11
> 1.What changes have happened in your work and practices as an artist during the
> last ten years? Do you think your relationship with technology / or the way you
> use technology /has changed during this time?
My practice has widened intensively to take on a tough challenge of the entire techno-social system we are embedded within, are part of. Yes, this includes my relationship AND my understanding of the relationship between all flows that are the substance of technology. This also includes all aspects of life governed by techno-social protocol. When I use (a) technology I understand what I will both lose and gain when using that particular protocol. Using a technology is in fact, a changing of flows of energy that we are embedded in, part of. We are not separate in any way from everything else!
Where Does Sad News Come From? by Douglas Kahn
Rod Summers audiotape collage Sad News, was created in 1979. It was sourced from three different BBC Radio Four broadcasts that were part of a set of occasional recordings Summers made between 1973 and 1978. It was published in a compilation called Glisten the same year, under his “cassette underground” project named VEC Audio Exchange. A total of 63 copies were sent out around the world. Copy No. 40, postmarked 16 November 1980, was sent to Dan Lander in Toronto, the audio artist and coeditor of the influential books Sound by Artists and Radio Rethink. Lander included Sad News on his own compilation that he sent to friends and acquaintances. I received my copy from Lander sometime around 1986. That would be twenty years ago. more “Where Does Sad News Come From? by Douglas Kahn”
The Green Bench – Day 2 – eNZed
Today is completely packed and busy: cleaning, organizing, and installing the show at the Greenbench for the gallery opening this evening. The title of the show is BURN and the show is obliquely or directly about hydrocarbons — plastics, production, consumption, distribution. Julian had tracked down a collection of oil samples from an early and now spent New Zealand (oil) field nearby (name?). I am surprised, oil — with the tectonic regime here, the foreshore of a plate boundary subduction zone. Ah, maybe the heat flow is actually lower when considering that because the immediate crust is double thickness with the subducting plate, so there is a lower heat gradient from the mantle. Shallow oil, guess I’d never thought of the genesis of such plays.
I use embodied energy to organize and clean the gallery kitchen for the opening, along with having numerous conversations with folks introduced from Julian’s extensive local network. He asks me if I will talk at the opening sharing some anecdotes about working in the oil business. Completely impromptu, though I had a minute to sit with a piece of paper before and write a five- or six-point list of things to remember to talk about. I am not the best story-teller, especially in such a situation, but folks politely listen to a few minutes of my rambling.
Later in the evening, raucous preparations over wine precede delicious dinner back at the house. Definitely some good cooks around!
The question for me becomes — how to keep track of the dialogues, and the warm humans encountered? Julian mentions there is an artist-residency possibility in town. It would be great to hang here for a time. Somehow, it reminds me distantly of Tornio, in Lapland, half-way ’round the world, literally, in the sense of it being a littoral backwater along a river in a small country, but the community here seems quite activated, and the differences between Finns/Lapps and Kiwis/Maori are complex and significant. Similarities do exist — it would be good to have the time to explore. It looks like there will not be any spare time in these 11 days for much autonomous explorations, although this is okay, as the people immediately surrounding Julian and Sophie’s lives provide a rich environment for encounter. And a site for the exchange of inspiration.
dkfrf review
Rinus makes some nice notes on the Amurikan evening at das kleine field recording festival last week in Kreuzberg.
Rinus is one of those intelligent and grounded souls who facilitate events that are the polar opposite of pretentious. informal, humane, and best, they include a collection of found artists. artists who are connected by their desire to connect with others in an open way. my impression of the evening of performances was largely the comfort with which it proceeded. for example, I had not intended doing a visual set, thinking conservatively it was about field recording. but when Brandon got the video-projector set up, I thought, yeah, why not. so I started the evening with a slowly-building barrage. guilty, sure, of a phat mix. Rinus noted that it divided the crowd — it’s that polarizing influence that I seem to have. hmmm. it’s partly the software, got to explore how to slow it down for a more meditative mix. density. (going back to the thoughts about levity and density a few weeks ago). Brandon’s set was a perfect counterpoint to mine with the levity and Light of his life.
more “dkfrf review”
berlinerpool
Sencer Vardarman — presents Berlinerpool at the tmp.deluxe project that is curated by Mathieu Dagorn and Nina Korolewski :: a curatorial platform, and so on.
Sencer has done a great job with this berlinerpool — a process of collective action — 100 artists, a web site, an excellent clearing-house mailing list of cultural events and calls for participation, an archive, events, shows, etc. he’s a former student of mine from ifkik. we talk about feedback, fund-raising, MONEY, and funding for a room.
end of the goddamn month. wouldn’t mind it if there were no distinguishing variations in the days of the week, months of the year, days in the month. or maybe just a daily number, sequential, starting from the beginning of the millineum. or so. to day is a waste, stream didn’t work to August; testing before that didn’t work to Pit; and a trip to HKW doesn’t solve anything at all, scheisser!
and 75 years ago, Hitler came to power. doch…
sensing the streets
meet Wolfgang at the Pergamon and on to an exhibition at the Mitte Museum am Festungensgraben that some of his students participated on. Sensing the streets.
Farben, Töne, Gerüche – viele Sinneseindrücke, Stimmungen und Empfindungen werden beim Gang durch eine Strasse ausgelöst. Um diese sinnliche Wahrnehmung städtischer Räume geht es in der Ausstellung “Sensing the Street. Eine Strasse in Berlin”. Sie ist Ergebnis eines gemeinsamen Forschungs- und Ausstellungsprojekts des Instituts für Europäische Ethnologie an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin sowie dem UNI.K –UdK. Studio für Klangkunst und Klangforschung und dem Institut für Kunst im Kontext an der Universität der Künste Berlin. Am Beispiel von drei repräsentativ ausgewählten Strassen – Acker-, Adalbert- und Karl-Marx-Strasse – wird der Strassenraum multisensorisch, d.h. visuell, auditiv, olfaktorisch und taktil erfahrbar gemacht.
(00:19:07, stereo audio, 36.7 mb)
I meet and talk to Friederike, one of the students involved at some length, mainly encouraging her with the project — they have, indeed, made a very nice manifestation of research. and this is only the first of three absolutely different exhibitions in different venues entirely in the next two weeks. I would wish to be around for the other two. it was an opening, so that it was crowded and hot, but we got there earlier than the crowds and got to check out the especially provocative audio and video works.
Art is the image of a human being, This means that when a person is confronted with art, then they are in fact confronted with their own self, and so open their own eyes. And so it is the creative person who is addressed, their creativity, their freedom, their autonomy. And this is only possible using the concept of art, however, this concept must be made more comprehensive. You cannot and should not deal with this concept traditionally and say: that is what artists do, and that is what engineers do?. but you can get beyond the concept. And the only escape route is a more comprehensive concept of art that is anthropological and that is taken seriously: that everyone is an artists, and that every person has a creative core. — Joseph Beuys
Wolfgang and I continue our conversation a bit later at a cafe (after I meet Barbara, an old friend of Volker’s!), then I race back over to the Pergamon for a longer walk-through, then it’s back home to get some packing done. Roman is there and asks for some help editing a copy of the manifesto that he and Alexei are working on for Transmediale. then I crash for the early wake-up.
The Wild Surmise
Sue Thomas poses some interesting questions in her search for possible synergies between the cyber and the natural. it’s an open project — add you own answers on her site!
Please describe where you lived and your strongest memories of nature during the years of your growing up. I’m interested in both positive and negative recollections of anything from the smallest plot to the largest wilderness, including animals and plants.
sotto voce: I am a native of Alaska, born there as a Cold War military child. My father, a senior Pentagon analyst, sport-hunted grizzly and polar bears among other magnificent animals. We moved to Boston, then Southern California, then Washington DC, living in suburban or rural fringes of cities. A primal memory was of viewing a total solar eclipse from a beach in Acadia National Park in the northeast state of Maine, USA, at five years old. Watching the sun be consumed, until there was only a shimmering ring of fire surrounding a black hole in the sky. My father was an amateur astronomer, and I accompanied him on a further four total eclipse expeditions. Along with these specific memories, there are general memories of sleeping in the woods, of eating around a fire, of washing in streams, mosquitoes, and dark star-brilliant skies. more “The Wild Surmise”
Digitally Yours
rising too early again, out to Turku with a few hard-cores to tour the exhibition Digitally Yours that Andy Best had curated. not enough sleep. even our tireless Pixelache host, Juha, was unable to roll out of bed in time for the train, so it ended up there were only five of us who actually made the trip, but it was well worth it.
begin to get a migraine after seeing the show at the Ars Nova museum — most of the artists were there, so we were able to interact with them directly. I recorded several of the talks, so, hope to get that online shortly. great also to have a bit of time to spend with Mukul and Manu with their deLightful boy.
Digitally Yours examines the relationship between technology and humanity. The exhibition maps out how everyday life and art have changed over the period when digital technologies have become commonplace. The artists in the exhibition all use digital technologies but their relationship to it is critical. They consider the relationship between man and machine, the dreams and promises, the realities and threats. The works in the exhibition ponder the fundamental questions of humanity in this globalized information networked world, while building on a new type of collaboration between the artist and the viewer.
Animaatiokone Industries (FI); Laura Beloff (FI) & Erich Berger (AT); Elina Mitrunen (FI); Chris Burden (US); Anita Fontaine (AU/US); Phil Coy (UK); Ed Burton (UK) & Zachary Lieberman (US); Juha Huuskonen (FI) & Tuomo Tammenpää (FI); Manu Luksch (AT/UK) Christian Nold (UK); Stanza (UK); Soda (UK); Markus Renvall (FI); Åsa Ståhl (SE) & Kristina Lindström (SE); Pia Tikka (FI)
on the way back, I get off before Helsinki to have dinner with David and Maria at their new place in the countryside. unfortunately, my head it really done in by then, so, I’m hardly good company. David drives me to Linnunlaulu where I finish packing. the migraine dissipates somewhat and I am able to go to the closing party for an hour to say goodbye to folks. then off to crash for another even earlier rise and 26 hours of travel torture.
crossings
the accession to thought, and the impulse to create removes us from the flow of present be-ing. outside the Nieuwmarkt is noisy with tourists wandering in search of meaning, the people in the market stalls, selling, café sitters. with beer, coffee, lunch. enjoying a bit of early springtime afternoon sun. inside the tipping flat, where front wall is leaning drunkenly forward over the café tables set up on the brick sidewalk four floors below, inside, there is the atmosphere of closeted dis-knowing. but a dis-knowing in need of gradual release into a form.
no network. so discommunicator. decide to go to Montevideo to see David Garcia’s show of video works, Faith in Exposure — a project in which artists ‘talk back’ to the news media.
The exhibition addresses the central narrative of western democracy, our ‘faith in exposure,’ the unquestioning belief that the circulation of knowledge through the news media (and other means) constrains the powerful and guarantees democracy. In a world where we may know but are still compelled to obey, Faith in Exposure is a platform for artists and researchers to ask whether it is still tenable to believe the central myth of the information age: that knowing the truth shall make us free.
technical difficulties with a couple works. intriguing, some arrive at the tableau of just-more-media — in the process of projection in white cubes. how to disassemble the house of the master with the tools of the master. and find truth…
finally meet Sher. network crossings. dinner (red beet pasta with smoked mozzarella, mmmm! at Mappa), then on to an electric dance performance Anatomica#3 at the Korzo Theater by expatriate Canadian choreographer André Gringas. what to say. networks are alive because of the real energy going into them.
somehow I am surprised that Sher is American! all this time I was thinking that she was Dutch or something. another cultural refugee — thriving in Europe.
Mr. Summers
a tour around to the Netherlands Architectural Institute where Rod is gardening for the Edible City exhibition/installation (which happened to have some of the nice ceramic work by Piet Stockmans). Rod leads a wander through the old town, starting with Hell’s Gate, and on to Heaven for a few minutes where I chat with the head of the local growers cooperative.
the balance of the day is spent listening to, talking about Rod’s work, and the work of others who we know. an artist’s artist, Rod can’t be bothered to take any pause in making work and keep human connections running to worry about creating a web presence. though there is some of his work is on ubuweb, put up by a collaborator, Jesse Glass, as is a good wiki page, such a wealth of material would be an inspiration to a broader public, methinks.
isea day 1.5
Kate Armstrong and I try out urbantells.net as their first guinea pigs. tech problems start everything off. and seem nearly as ubiquitous as the number of devices deployed at the exhibition.
the polar/solar brunch ends up with Ed, Ken, and I talking over lunch for several hours — nice, catching up — mapping the network, teaching, working, net-working. we then wander over to the CRUMB project run by Sarah Cook and Beryl Graham to have some tea and cakes and some interesting conversation on strategies for survival in the culture sphere.
yeah, isea ’06. stories begin to accumulate as to failures of the local infrastructure in support of the program of incoming artists and their projects.
later, doing the gallery crawl with Ken, run into Mathias. catch some interesting work and good food.
response to Lev
sotto voce: Some comments (on the nettime post from Lev Manovich, Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:22:03 -0800 – his text snips in yellow)…
We Have Never Been Modular…
but we have agreed-upon standards via political hegemony, pressure of dominant ideas, and participating in the easy consumption of ‘whatever works’. And since standards underlie the concept of modularity, I’m afraid that I disagree unless you are talking about another collective “we” that is represented by the demographic you are addressing and are member of.
Thanks to everybody who commented on my text “Remix and Remixability” (November 16, 2005). It was provoked by reading about web 2.0 and all the excitement and hype (as always) around it, so indeed I am “following the mainstream view” in certain ways. But I would like to make it clear that ultimately we are talking about something which does not just apply to RSS, social bookmarking, or Web Services. We are talking about the logic of modularity which extends beyond the Web and digital culture…
And it is worth mentioning that none of those ideas are remotely sourced in digital technologies — they are constructed on the entire precursor socio-technical infrastructure of engineering in general. digital technologies are a ‘final’ product of a long and continuous development process of standardization that started when Empire (or collective social life) was born.
Modularity has been the key principle of modern mass production. Mass production is possible because of the standarisation of parts and how they fit with each other – i.e. modularity. Although there are historical precedents for…
From an engineering point of view, modularity is a subsequent process result following the necessary precursor: the development of standards.
As a simple anecdote, I recall traveling across Europe in the early 80’s. When crossing a border, say, between Italy and Germany, or France and Germany, aside from the ritual rubber-stamping of the passport (and occasional body searches, but that’s another story), one was aware that suddenly, when before the streets were full of Renaults, Citroens, and Peugeots, they were now filled with VWs, Mercedes, and BMWs. To such a degree that if you saw a Citroen Deux Cheveaux puttering around in Bavaria — a car I occasionally had in those days — you would invariably honk and wave (at the ‘hippies’). The currency changed, the language changed (obviously), the places for money exchange shifted, the electric plugs morphed, the telephone rings, cables, and plugs changed. Distance didn’t unless one crossed the Channel where temperature, length, weight, currency divisions, and volume changed to absurdly baffling non-decimal fractions. The socio-political history of the EU (and globalization as well) is mapped over the development of international standards that (have) effectively wiped out those prior social differences.
The history underlying any and all movements towards a pervasive technology (regardless of the geographic extent) is the history of standards development. This precedes any (modular) engineering deployments. (A wonderful USD350 million glitch on a NASA Mars project — when an engineer (collaborating with ESA) forgot to convert between metric and US measurements). Of course, economic (military) hegemony is absolutely connected to this process of standards development. You join in a military alliance and if you are the minor partner, you have to re-bore your cannons to take his caliber of projectile, lest, in the heat of battle, you run out of usable ammunition.
I think a discussion of standardization supersedes the discussion of modularity as most (all!?) characteristics that arise in a description of modularity and its impacts are derived from the ‘textures’ of the socio-technical landscape that are determined by standardization. In a way, collective knowledge as a very broad and general social product is a result of standardization, especially if you are considering, for example, knowledge that spans disparate physical locations. Even with the existence of the basic technology of the Internet, no collective knowledge may be derived without a standardization that transcends the physical restraints on the digital system — a primary one being calibration of time scales, but there are many other calibrations that must take place as well. In the Paul Edwards article quoted below, he points out that there are heavy consequences for detecting global warming because the propagation of measurement standard differences between national and international organizations. An example of the fragility of knowledge building and the importance of standards in collective action.
Strip Latin from biological nomenclature, and international collaboration in the entire discipline is immediately snuffed.
It would seem that the larger the social span of an institution, the greater the built-in desire to establish and propagate standards among its constituents. Maybe remix is the ultimate surrender of the individual to the collective. Standardized idiosyncrasy. Lovely end result.
And at the other extreme, some of the more powerful expressions of artistic creativity take place in a landscape where there is some freedom to deliberately ignore standards (and modularity) and filter lived experience through the idiosyncratic filter of self — re-presenting that lived experience rather than an obsession with filtering someone else’s signal…
I think your mention of musicians sampling published music points to something perhaps more tiresome — related to the instance when rock stars sing about life as a rock star. A simulation of a simulation. TeeVee shows about teevee producers. Escher’s lizard consuming itself. Maybe remix culture will turn out to be so efficient that it will come to that — annihilation by self-consumption of its own mediated worldview…
Maintaining consistency in this huge, constantly changing network is the work of standards. Standards are socially constructed tools: They embody the outcomes of negotiations that are simultaneously technical, social, and political in character. Like algorithms, they serve to specify exactly how something will be done. Ideally, standardized processes and devices always work in the same way, no matter where, what, or who applies them. Consequently, some elements of standards can be embedded in machines or systems. When they work, standards lubricate the construction of technological systems and make possible widely shared knowledge. — Paul N. Edwards
Edwards, P.N., 2004. A Vast Machine: Standards as Social Technology. Science, 304(7 May 2004), pp.827-828.
Measurement is a comparison process in which the value of a quantity is expressed as the product of a value and a unit; that is, Quantity = {a numerical value} x {unit} where the unit is an agreed-upon value of a quantity of the same type. The concept of a quantity such as length is independent of the associated unit; the length is the same whether it is measured in feet or meters. A standard is a physical realization of the definition, with an agreed-upon value to be used as a reference. — Jeff Flowers
Flowers, J., 2004. The Route to Atomic and Quantum Standards. Science, 306(19 November 2004), pp.1324-1330.
Convergent Practice: Networking and Creativity
8th Annual Teaching with Technology Conference — Final Program:
Convergent Practice: Networking and Creativity. John Hopkins, CU-Boulder — Room 1B90
The focus of this presentation is on the convergence of digital/network technology and the arts, and the opportunities for collaborating with a global network of artists. This presentation includes an overview of several specific digital arts projects in Europe and the United States and commentary about the practice behind teaching and creative artwork. (https://neoscenes.net)
…
TWT Talk notes:
“teaching is an action, a practice that embodies art as a way-of-doing: a life praxis. in a matrix of social structures it formalizes the path of movement of energies between two people, the teacher and the student. at the same moment of this formalization, equal energies must reverse the implied hierarchy of this polarization and exchange the roles of the participants: the forces applied by the social matrix re-configured or simply discarded. the two collect the sum total of their knowing, rooted in their sensual awarenesses, and bring it to the forefront of relation. the harmonic flow, the oscillation, thus initiated must hold as its frequency the organic synchronicity of the two individuals and the existence of formal structure must dissipate into a Presence of genuine dialogue.”
background
did undergrad work in geophysical engineering at CSM, worked as an international explorationist for a major, quit to collect an MFA from CU in Photo and Electonic Media, then left the US in 1989 to live and work in a variety of places from Iceland to most countries around the Baltic Rim in Northern Europe running seminars at 15-20 universities each year under the title networking and creativity. here at CU as a sabbatical replacement, but about to return to Europe. more “Convergent Practice: Networking and Creativity”
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.
Circus: Reflections on Presence and Dialogue as a basis for Open Process Practice
three days done of the stimulating CIRCUS meetings. and the last gasps of net.culture class for this year. and about to head to Joensuu, another adventure in teaching in another place. after the short visit last fall, I am wondering what will happen now. that it is spring, or, even, summer, will make concentration on the situation difficult for the students.
the talk/discussion:
it was a shaky debacle leading to an interesting discussion both at the time and in the ensuing duration of the Helsinki CIRCUS meeting.
my notes for the talk: more “Circus: Reflections on Presence and Dialogue as a basis for Open Process Practice”
net2art
(ED: Review of the net-to-art exhibition written for (the now defunct) Norwegian web-culture site http://kunst.no/ at the millennial change)
What our age needs is communicative intellect. For intellect to be communicative, it must be active, practical, engaged. In a culture of the simulacrum, the site of communicative engagement is electronic media. In the mediatrix, praxis precedes theory, which always arrives too late. The communicative intellect forgets the theory of communicative praxis in order to create a practice of communication. — Taylor and Saarinen, from “Imagologies: Media Philosophy”
Imagine.
Enter a plain white room with an Other. Take a facing seat one meter apart in not-too-comfortable chairs and follow these instructions: “You have three hours, create a dialogue with each Other.” There is no piped-in music, no magazines on coffee tables, no televisions, no mobile phones, no windows. No implements, tools, ethernet connections, or whining hard-drives. And, as this is not an experiment, there is no one watching from behind mirrored glass or by video surveillance.
Start the dialogue.
Imagine, what are the possibilities?
Now, increase the separation to ten meters between you and the Other. Repeat the instructions. What now? Add the mediation of a heavy glass window between; add a microphone and speakers on each side. What happens? Abstractly paint over the glass with opaque pigments. Take away the microphones and speakers, each of you has a pencil and paper to write messages which will then be carried by robotic assistants from one half of the room to the other via a long hallway.
Imagine designing the rooms.
Add the fact that neither of you speaks a common mother tongue, but instead, you must use a third or even fourth language, sometimes relying on a book to supply the proper words.
Imagine building the rooms.
Split the room in half, place the two halves at least 1000 kilometers apart, replace the hallway with a slender wire of glass, you are given the means to throw words, encoded with several layers of machine translation, through the glass wire. Provide keyboards for each to touch, exchange the glass window with a monitor that displays the color, form, sign and symbol of your decoded dialogue.
Imagine several hundred million rooms, a person in each.
more “net2art”
Oslo Presence
Back at Atelier Nord for the Oslo Presence get-together: good crew of folks intent on setting up a collaboration platform. It’ll be called N.I.C.E. (Network Interface for Cultural Exchange) and it grew out of the TempLab at Kiasma last year. more “Oslo Presence”
next five minutes 3 review
© Steve Cisler 1999. Non-profit servers and archives may distribute this document, as long as it is not on the same page as annoying banner ads or animated gif files. Others may contact the author. [Ed: sadly, networker and friend Steve passed away in 2008, as this text doesn’t seem to be floating around anywhere else, I decided to extract and revive it from my archive!]
“Tactical media” refers to the use of old and new media to achieve non commercial goals and to emphasize “a plethora of potentially subversive political issues.”
In spite of all the electronic connectivity, there is still a hunger to meet in one place. The more we communicate online, the greater the number of real world conferences and meetings. People realize they still need to get together, no matter how smoothly a video conference or email exchange may be. In March 1999, I took part in a multi-ring circus of activities called Next Five Minutes 3 (N5M3) in Amsterdam. It followed several years of my online participation.
Background
In April of 1996, Bruce Sterling started a discussion topic in the Wired magazine conference on The WELL, an online site where I had been hanging out since it started. The topic was entitled “Goofy leftists sniping at Wired [magazine]” and included a lot of posts from the nettime mailing list that Sterling found amusing or outrageous. I joined nettime (www.nettime.org) the source of most of the pieces and found it was quite a bit more varied and interesting than the wired conference had been. It’s hard to typify the kind of messages you see on nettime, but it includes criticism of the current trends in Internet growth, reports from hot spots in Eastern Europe, innovative art exhibits and experiments, meeting reports, and controversies ranging from the provocative use of new media to the role of George Soros and his Open Society Institute. There are also text experiments and word plays plus weekly calendars and announcements for obscure journals, literary web sites, and new media experiments. The strength of it, the lure of it for me is that many worlds intersect, and through the distributed moderation by people in North America and Europe, just about the right mix of messages reaches the readers who number less than 1000. Originally, many were from Holland, Germany, and eastern Europe. Now, people from Asia, North America, Africa, and Australia take part. more “next five minutes 3 review”
next five minutes 3 participants
Bijlagen.
a. Volledige gastenlijst van Next Five Minutes 3
Abdallah, Mogniss + Abels, Fred + Ackers, Susanne + Alam, Shahidul + Alksnis, Arvids + Andujar, Daniel Garcia + Aristarkhova, Irina + Armstrong, Franny + Arns, Inke + Aziz, Afdhel + Baker, Rachel + Bangert, Diederik + Barnes, Steve + Bassett, Caroline + Basuki, Tedjabayu + Beamer, Emer + Becker, Konrad + Belle, Guy van + Beothy, Balazs + Beryll, Emerald + Biemann, Ursula + Blazic, Larisa + Blom, Erwin + Boeschoten, Robert van + Bosma, Josephine + Both, Jaap + Boyadijev, Luchezar + Brienen, Kees + Bronac, Ferran + Buholtz, Edgar Um + Byfield, Ted + Celakoski, + Chanel, Lola + Chang, Shu-Lea + Chemillier, Marc + Choulguine, Alexei + Cisler, Steven + Cisse, Madigjene + Convex TV + Coronel, Sheila + Cosic, Vuk + Cruijssen, Walter van der + D’Amaro, Zoe + Danner, Gary + Davis, Richard Pierre + Delhaas, Rik + Dixit, Kunda + DJ Fat + Douglas, Noel + Doument, Tony + Dowling, Kevin + Dragosavac, Dejan + Duijnhoven, Serge van + Eeden, Michael van + Eisenmenger, Michael + Elsenaar, Arthur + Engler, Veronica + Es, Andree van + Fassotte, Karel + Fernandez, Maria + Flor, Micz + Fountain, Allan + Fox, J + Freeman, Andi + Frelih, Luka + Fuller, Matthew + Gaberman, Denise + Galatas, Eric + Garancs, Jaanis + Garcia, David + Garrin, Paul + Gonggrijp, Rop + Gouriotcheva + Grassmuck, Volker + Gray, Vicki + Grigg, Ian + Grootheest, Tijmen van + Gutmair, Ulrich + Hagdahl, Peter + Halleck, Deedee + Hamman, Robin + Har, Anna + Hartmann, Maren + Harwood, Graham + Hegener, Michiel + Het Fort van Sjakoo + Heteren, Adrienne van + Hillenius, Gijs + Hirsch, Jesse + Hobijn, Erik + Holder, Helen + Hoof, Peter van + Hopkins, John + Hutnyk, John + Hyde, Adam + Hyndman, Marilyn + Isanc, Tomaz + Jacobi, Manse + Jankovic, Vesna + Jarman, Mervin + Jelic, Borja + Kain, Gylan + Karschnia, Alex + Keenan, Thomas + Kelha, Jude + Kelmendi, Aferdita + Kepplinger, Gabriele + Kidd, Dorothy + Kimelis, Peteris + Kireev, Oleg + Kleiner, Dmytrik + Kluitenberg, Eric + Kogawa, Tetsuo + Kopernik-Steckel, Christina + Koster, Patrick + Kousbroek, Daniel + Kuchma, Sergiy + Kurtz, Steven + Ladd, Mike + Leidloff, Gabrielle + Leong, Apo + Lialina, Olia + Lilley, Patricia + Loo, Babeth van + Lovink, Geert + Luarasi, Iris + Lubbers, Eveline + Lucas, Marti + Luksch, Manu, + Luther Blissett + Luyten, Marcia + Maas, Rens + Magnan, Nathalie + Malkic, Kiko + Manoljovic, Becha + Mansfield, Roddy + Markovic, Igor + Marroquin, Raoul + MauzZ + McCarty, Diana + Medosch, Armin + Mejia, Silvia + Melendez, Papoleto + Metzger, Gustav + Milicic-Davic, Branka + Mirchovic, Sasa + Muka, Arben + Mulder, Kees + Muller, Nat + Nuhanovic, Hasan + O’ Connor, Paul + O’ Donnel, Sheila + Oldenburg, Helene von + Panoussis, Zenon + Pantic, Drazen + Pasquinelli, Matteo + Peljhan, Marko + Peter, Claudia + Petrus, Corrine + Pierce, Julianne + Ploeg, Rick van der + Poole, Thomas + Porter, Andy + Puchen, Danny + Puto, Artan + Quijano, Agustin de + Radenkovic, Sonja + Ratniks, Martins + Redundant technology Initiative + Reiche, Claudia + Rhizome + Rich, Kate + Richter, Judith + Roelvink, Huub + Rogic, Sinisa + Romic, Marcell + Rose, Elisa + Rosenzweig, Jed + Rowell, Andy + RTMark + Sag, Dave + Salomon, Deborah + Samphel, Thubten + Sandler, Richard + Sandor, Szabo + Santen, Marieke van + Saracini, Eugen + Sarker, Partha Pratim + Sassen, Saskia + Scha, Remko + Schans, Wil van der + Schilling, Thorsten + Schneider, Florian + Seidl, Markus + Seidler, Gisela + Sengmuller, Gebhard + Sengupta, Shuddhabrata + Shulgin, Alexei + Silva, Sam de + Skelton, Pam + Smite, Rasa + Smits, Raitis + Sollfrank, Cornelia + Soukup, Katarina + Spaink, Karin + Spek, Jo van der + Spirovan, Suncana + Stevens, James, + Sundaram, Ravi + Tangens, Rena + Tatic, Sava + Tatomir, Biljana + Thoens, Barbara + Thomas, Sue + Tijen, Tjebbe van + Tralla, Mare + Tschudin, Patrik + Tsuchiya, Yutaka + Tsuchya, Yutaka + Ueno, Toshya + Varona, Rex + Vasiljevic, Nebojsa + Vllahiu, Arber + Volkart, Yvonne + Vukovic + Waites, Will + Wallbank, James + Warschawski, Michael + Wehner, Stephanie + Wessling, Maurice + Whitehurst, Ann + Wilding, Faith + Yokokoji, Matsuko + Zeldenrust, Ineke + Zoekende, Therese
e. Het uiteindelijke programma
CONFERENCE VENUES
De Balie
Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10
1017 RR Amsterdam
Paradiso
Weteringschans 6-8
1017 SG Amsterdam
De Waag (Theatrum Anatomicum)
Nieuwmarkt 4
1012 CR Amsterdam
V2_Organisatie (Rotterdam)
Eendrachtsstraat 10
3012 XL Rotterdam
Virtual conference venues:
https://www.n5m.org, hosted by The Digital City: https://www.dds.nl
more “next five minutes 3 participants”
smart show online
Jason has put up some photos of Trey on a new web site (ed – no longer valid). Daze later. Working full tilt all the rest of the week. Saturday night. I joined in an online IRC conversation this morning at 0400 with people from the Finnish Artists Association MUU at a function at the Academy of Fine Art — the SMART SHOW OnLine — from on board the Silja Symphony cruise ship. It tore me out of deep sleep waking up at that hour, and then staying up for two hours talking on the keyboard and then on back to bed for a short nap before getting up and heading back into work.
net.art things? (an excerpt from ZKP4 net.art thread)
What was ZKP4? And, what was the net.art thread?
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997
From: hopkins@usa.net
Historians retrospecting on the foggy traces of History are always so tempted to label things as Movements and Periods and such. I find this rather ridiculous. Consider asking someone who is 40 years old how they felt about a situation that happened to them 25 years previous, what impressions, their emotional and intellectual state at the time and a detailed description of the material event, what REALLY happened… Now, aside from a handful of “life-changing” events that normally occur to people over time, they would have a VERY hard time reconstructing anything near the reality of their own past…
Now, when I see a term like Surrealism and Surrealists, I really have to Laugh at the way Art Historians and unfortunately artists too get caught into believing that this is the way things happened at all! I mean, look, are there, out there, to your knowledge, groups of people making Movements now? I would propose that it is not movements but simply the existence of dialogues of greater or lesser potency running between individuals who, depending on how much personal risk they are able to take, influence the lives of each other directly through this dialogue… (Take nettime for example — the perfect example of not a movement, but the accumulation of the various voices who are more or less talking to each other, nothing more nothing less. Ask yourself how much nettime CHANGES your life, and that is a measure of the dialogue…
I find the discussion about Net.Art to be rather pointless unless one is in the process of copyright protection or the rigor-mortise institutionalization of a history that is not even history. What about the International Networking Congress — of mail-artists; I have been part of an organic network and using that word for a long time, yet I don’t feel the need to claim a word to
1) describe the whole of being which generates the material and actual manifestations of my “life work” nor
2) posits some historical claim of legitimacy to what I am doing or how I am being…
I am sorry, but it seems a joke! And I just don’t see the point in dividing things up, what art FORMS are ascendant over another… I believe we all, in every formal sense, face a “hands-on” material world with one foot in the spiritual. Anything that we seek to DO faces the brutal challenge of either forcing material things into new configurations or of speaking/paying attention to another human in the hopes of inspiring them or being inspired… The material struggle that I think people are speaking of here (in terms of video art, net art, painting and so on) are all rather (or totally) similar aspects of that challenge of material transformation… Now, I know the immediate response to this from some is “well, net art isn’t material…” or some such argument, but that is simply not so. Is a computer material, is RAM material, are fiber optics material, copper wires, generators, monitors? I mean, fundamentally, almost all of what we call TECHNOLOGICAL media are material transformations relying solely on the two most abundant materials in the earth’s crust — silicon and oxygen — SiO2 — amorphous silica — glass — which covers — photography (camera-based media), all digital media (chips are made primarily of amorphous silica). Differences in all the manifestations are illusory and a result of the endless hair-splitting of the reductive system of Western science which has lead us only to finer questions of what we either never need to KNOW or what is so essential that we can’t KNOW it anyway… I think questions of quality rather quantity are more important to consider here. (parallel to ideas like a consideration of human obligations vs human rights) Another words for example, discussions of not whether Paul Garrin’s efforts with setting up Autono.net will work or not — but whether he is having a genuine influence on other people’s lives and whether that effect is positive or negative… Of course, that may seem a question to answer historically, but hey, I can answer it based on some near meetings with him, seeing his words, seeing his trail (etched in silicon) and so on… for myself, and express that personal understanding to someone else who would care to listen and share their impressions…
Sometimes I feel acutely the distance we have from each other in the veils of words that swirl around us, that we cloak ourselves in, and I am gratified to have spent some concentrated moments with some of you out there, from time-to-time, and place-to-place, physically unmediated, looking into your eyes, and speaking as direct as possible, or, better yet, silently sharing existence in this material incarnation…
I seize whatever physical means I can, based upon the moment, to express my desires, my life-energies, what difference does it make?
I would quote and amplify from my own take Bob Adrian’s remark “Why should we, as artists struggling to find ways to survive on the tricky edge of a new digital communications environment, be trying to breath new life into the corpse of the traditional art institutions? For the money, fame and glamour?” Giving lip-service to any forms of institutional cultural organization is to give it credit, form, substance, and most dangerously, POWER. NAMING a thing is to call it into existence and invoking it repeatedly will pump it up… Although I would not criticize the actions of those people who seek to understand the workings of cultural/social situations, I think that understanding needs to be weighed — whether the knowledge is needed even — after all, every thing that can be known, do we need to know it, or should we know it? Eating from the Tree of the Knowledge or Good and Evil got us here possibly, mired in a material world that is possibly only a furnace to test our spirits for other things or simply a place to act out our lives here and now… Fame? (I suggest spinning the John Lennon tune of the same name as artfully interpreted by John and David (Bowie) …) Fame! What’s a name? What’s a name? What’s a name…
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997
From: hopkins@usa.net
Re: Net art vs. video art ?
Again, speaking on this thread of histories of this technological field of work that many of us are in and responding to Jeremy’s comments…
[…]
If you wanted to strip the existing contemporary history of art down to consist of monographs, exhibition catalogs of major museums, critical writings in major Art publications, you still wouldn’t get anything remotely coherent about the workings of technology-based arts … to speak of misinformation and prejudice is simply not applicable to a body of experience that is primarily personal and not yet even remotely collective … Nettime is (or should be) a prime example not of collective histories happening in the moment, but of the development of dynamic dialogic personal histories that are happening now, while we are alive and kicking.
[…]
I guess where ever I see wrestling with these collective histories — who did what first, who named this or that, I am immediately struck by the futility of the efforts — I suppose perhaps that positions are being taken that confuse personal and collective histories … You could say that personal histories can be known by the individual, but collective histories cannot be known in any definitive way until time has distilled (killed?) the many voices, and even then, the relationship of the collective history to ‘what really happened’ may not be “accurate” …
History is a well, it is full of lessons — and the truism “you don’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’re from” holds some power. But notice that it speaks of the individual rather than the mass; it speaks of individual understanding of personal histories …
I need only read Tacitus’ “The Annals of Imperial Rome” rather than The New York Times to know not only the principles but the substances of the corruption in the US government in Washington! No doubt. When historical distillations reflect principled understanding, that is when they are of the greatest value.
History is written ex-post-mortem.
ArtNode-ing
Another long, interesting day. (Starts off: girl dressed in black on the train into town with a rhesus monkey on her back reading Kalil Gibran’s The Prophet). I went directly over to meet Mats at ArtNode in the afternoon. I never got a good connection working, though Mats was generous enough to let me hack for a few hours. It seems that their access provider doesn’t have a good server, nor do they give good technical support — I was suspicious that it was a problem with the PPP configuration and the modem init string. At any rate, I was able to download what email I had waiting and upload the string of messages I had been nursing along the past ten days. However, Fetch wasn’t working, so I couldn’t upload these very pages which was very irritating as I need to update and renew these to make them even marginally interesting … So goes the InfoSuperCrawlingWay… Email brings this from Gunnar Viglunds, a former student of mine in Iceland:
Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not wisdom, Wisdom is not truth, Truth is not beauty, Beauty is not love, Love is not music. Music is THE BEST
this from Mr. Halfler Trio hissef, Andrew “don’t-find-me-and-I-won’t-look-for-you” McKenzie:
… he who is in you is greater than than he who is in the world … [1 John 4:4]
and this from the painter, Carol Sutton, in Toronto:
No foe, no dangerous pass, we heed,
Brook no delay, but onward speed
With loosened rein;
And, when the fatal snare is near,
We strive to check our mad career,
But strive in vain.
Could we new charms to age impart,
And fashion with a cunning art
The human face,
As we can clothe the soul with light,
And make the glorious spirit bright
With heavenly grace,
How busily each passing hour
Should we exert that magic power,
What ardor show,
To deck the sensual slave of sin,
Yet leave the freeborn soul within,
In weeds of woe!
— excerpt from “Coplas De Manrique (From The Spanish),” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I then went directly over the the Academy and found the performance space without much difficulty. Bettina will be sending me the name of the artist — the title of the performance was “Body as Space.” Mats Hjelm was there, and it turns out that he is working in the Video Department there at the Academy. Also in attendance was Monika Larsen-Denis, who studied up in Iceland at the Academy a couple years ago. Bettina and a friend of hers and I hung out after the performance talking with different people, and then headed to a noisy/hip/cool bar in town. I just made the last train from Stockholm to Barkaby that evening, but that arrived after the last bus ran, which meant I was destined for sore feet after the seven kilometer walk back to Selma and Martin’s place. Ouch!
netbase
Again, a brilliant day. I was up before sunrise with these loud birds. Recording them for a few moments before going back to sleep for an hour. Spring will not turn back now. It can’t. The momentum of this brilliance cannot be opposed even by the most virulent winter. Of this I am sure. I work in the flat for the morning, updating the Web site (I fixed the backgrounds for the postcard page, added a few new cards, and fixed a few other details…) Waiting to get a hold of Heidi again to get access to the Mac in her office, as she offered to me … I would also like to hear today’s Kunstradio broadcast “live,” as it were, from the studios, but that maybe is not possible. We’ll see.
Networking invites personal disclosure. — Roy Ascott
I was able to use the Mac at Kunstradio, meanwhile talking with Elisabeth and August. Afterwards I went searching for street musicians to record, finding a happy trio in the Karlsplatz U-bahn station. I recorded three songs while sitting in the sunshine. Later in the afternoon I met with Mathias at the Kunsthalle café where we had a beer and then walked over to the MuseumQuartier where the Internet provider Public Netbase maintain their offices, library, and meeting room. I had been in contact with Konrad Becker, the director of Netbase through the superb web site that they maintain, so I had wanted to meet him along with Marie Ringler. Mathias and Konrad together teach occasionally in Linz, Austria. Later, Mathias and I met Sylvia and a Spanish friend of theirs, an artist from Malaga who has been living in Vienna for five years and works in electronic media.
Review of ISEA 94
After a raucous week in Helsinki at the ISEA 1994 conference, returning to Reykjavík, I made these notes:
To write an all-encompassing article about the ever-changing states of cybernetics in art and culture is impossible. Although every digital machine is grounded in the balanced order of Eastern religions through its binary yin-yang core, the one fundamental concept that dominates digital arts today is chaos. Furthermore, chaos and change are themselves only elements of the vast collective rush of information experience that is carrying us on into the virtual spaces of post-industrial info-society.
I recently enjoyed the very chaotic experience of attending the Fifth International Symposium on Electronic Art in Helsinki, co-sponsored by the Inter-Society on Electronic Arts (ISEA) and the Media Lab of the University of Art and Design (UIAH). The five-day conference in late August was attended by around 400 people and covered a wide range of topics, while a parallel array of artistic side-shows provided absolute proof of the far-ranging activity happening in cyberspace arts. more “Review of ISEA 94”
word-dialogue-Light-revolution-action
I would like to dedicate this work, in retrospect, to Dan and Stephanie Gaetke, friends who contributed to the book, and who died on July 17th, 1996 when TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed off of Long Island on its way to Paris. [ed: as of the day I found out of their passing from Leslee.]
This is the title of a 300-page photocopy edition (of 55) that was produced from visual and sonic work sent in from around 80 artists and others from 30 countries. The introductory essay describes the intent. The Museum of Modern Art in NYC just happens to groove on this kind of stuff for their Library collection, so they just acquired a copy for that very musty purpose of Archiving-the-Objects that are spawned from life/art. An earlier form of the essay grew out of a performance I did way back in 1989 entitled Antithesis/Dialogue. Included with the book is a 90-minute audio cassette of sonic material.
One might have put these words in a circle. That is, they form a cycle of active life: the active evolutionary life of the individual as a member of the human collective. As this is the title appearing on the invitations for this project, the assumption is that the works following somehow arise from the vital operation of this cycle. This book and cassette is about all five of these words — as they relate to carnate be-ing and do-ing and to spiritual development. Your reading of these Words constitutes a definite Action stimulated by Light, leading, perhaps, first to Dialogue, then on to Revolution!
The historical energy behind this project evolved primarily from the writings of Martin Buber and Paolo Freire, and also in part from: Yuri Olesha, J.M.G. LeClezio, Allan Sekula, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Lucy Lippard, André Malraux, The Bible, Amiri Baraka, Eugen Herrigel, L.S. Vygotsky, Fela Anikulapokute, Samuel Beckett, William Blake, Victor Burgin, Roland Barthes, Henry Miller, John Heartfield, August Sanders, Albrecht Dürer, Guy Debord, Amadeo Modigliani, Alpha Blondy, Edvard Munch, Snorri Sturlisson, John Coltrane, Bob Marley, John Lennon, Henri Lartigue, David Hockney, Tacitus, Miles Davis, Henry Fox-Talbot, Christian Boltanski, Stan Brakhage, Bruce Elder, Wassily Kandinsky, Simone Weil, Robert Frank, among many others. Energies in the present moment emanate from all of you who are in active contact with one another, sharing your creative spirits.
As an individual human, it is impossible for my contacts to span all human categories, but I feel that this project did cross over some boundaries. The idea of categories that control who-interacts-with-whom-in-life has always been a disagreeable concept to me. Why don’t scientists talk with artists, artists with workers, workers with non-workers — in fact, why do these categories exist at all? And of course, what about the most oppressive categories — those based on physical appearance, gender, genetic history, economic power, or intelligence — which limit free dialogue among the people in the world? I would not venture to explain here why human culture and behavior is what it is other than to observe we are a species on the brink of Something that we do not fully comprehend. We must, in the words of Martin Buber and without regard to artificial social categories, “enter into dialogue, into a genuine dialogue with one another” ! Direct, un-Media-ted contact! In concept this book&cassette works at creating a truly border-less community space wherein free dialogue might take place. But this kind of project is not an end in itself. The inherent success relies on a continuance, a continuity of living dialogue.
The way that Life is defined, created, and shared is a temporal and cultural reality. This cultural reality must be constantly confronted and critically examined so that both the culture and Life might evolve. By bringing our critical Life energies into productive, honest, and consistent Dialogue with the members of our community, we act as catalysts for cultural change and Living (spiritual) (r)evolution. We must begin to take responsibility for our human rights and obligations through this open contact with each other.
Dialogue stimulates genesis in the Language of Life — it is a revolutionary art itself when in critical juxtaposition to silence. Dialogue, as pure expression of heart and soul, is the core of all meaningful activism. Even as the literal and visual icons of culture carry dynamic social values, so Dialogue actively carries and transmits the social and spiritual consciousness. Dialogue is critical at all times — each coming day brings a new imperative for communication. It is essential that we be involved in this living Dialogue, this Logos, in order to catalyze Life on through the Modern Void of Spiritless Commodification, on to a higher plane of Being.
As with the first book project, there is a very special thanks to my partner, Magga Björg Jónsdóttir, for her expansive patience in listening to me complain about responses to my various mailings, and for her good loving. I would then thank those who had the time and energy to submit works for this project, as well as those who had the monetary capital to subscribe. It would have been my wish to simply distribute free copies to all contributors, but I neither had the capital to do this myself, nor wished to take the time and energy to find someone who did. Whatever, it is my hope that this book that you are reading has fallen into your hands at THE auspicious moment of your open-ness. Thank you, and Enjoy!
John Hopkins, 29 December 1991
there are 4 copies of the book left. If you are interested, I would pass one along to you for a cost of U$D200.00 plus postage via PayPal.
word-dialogue-Light-revolution-action
A limited 55-exemplar edition 300-page photocopy book+cassette — word-dialogue-Light-revolution-action — was produced from visual and sonic work sent in from around 80 artists and others from 30 countries in response to this invitation (pdf). The introductory essay below describes the intent. The Museum of Modern Art in NYC just happens to groove on this kind of stuff in their Library collection, so they just acquired a copy for that very musty purpose of Archiving-the-Objects that are spawned from life/art. An earlier form of the essay grew out of a performance I did way back in 1989 entitled Antithesis/Dialogue. Included with the book is a 90-minute audio cassette of sonic material.
One might have put the words in a circle. That is, they form a cycle of active life: the active evolutionary life of the individual as a member of the human collective. As this is the title appearing on the invitations for this project, the assumption is that the works contained arise from the vital operation of this cycle. This book and cassette is about all five of these words — as they relate to carnate be-ing and do-ing and to spiritual development. Your reading of these Words constitutes a definite Action stimulated by Light, leading, perhaps, first to Dialogue, then on to Revolution!
Cassette Side A
(00:46:16, stereo audio, 110.1 mb)
Cassette Side Z
(00:45:52, stereo audio, 111.1 mb)
more “word-dialogue-Light-revolution-action”
AntiThesis: Dialogue notes
Typed notes from the first few days of the Antithesis: Dialogue performance:
I am sitting, awake, at my desk. Before consulting the Oracle, the I Ching I dream awake of you. What to say when you arrive. I dream awake of you. And thank god it is not long a time until you are here. And, I will speak with you well before you read this, so, I need not speak of news: with my performance beginning tomorrow evening. I have the desk in the gallery. A small old, battered desk, with a crummy chair and a telephone. And some maps to my apartment. And that is all. Much to think about. And I meet another well-known British-American artist, Sue Coe. She is great. Very cool. We speak about the revolution…
+++
Or. So. The next day, the Thesis begins. Phone calls all morning even though it has not officially begun. Friends in NY and Virginia. Cool, But my breakfast goes cold.
+++
Much later. Far into the next day. A quiet spell. After a very late night. I begin this performance with about ten good friends. Like it should begin. (including a renegade group: we named them the Minstrels of Distress, visiting with some madness for a serenade at 0200 this morning. It will be a long week, I can tell. And I am happy that there is a break here. I just wonder how many times there will be here. to sit in silence. Oh, yeah, I wish you were here in this box, and we could perform… It is strange to look out the window and see the outside. And not be able to go out.
+++
Later this same day. Pretty quiet. A few calls — a good friend, a Japanese painter — a true painter, one who lives to paint — calls to say that he is in town from LA for a few days, and so he will stop by later this week. Cool. And then, surprise, my Thesis Chairman calls and comes over: ends up staying for two hours, talking. We speak about many things, including this planned move to Iceland. Whatever, I am pleased that he comes by — and speaks so directly with me. And so it goes. But, now, I am alone again with my thoughts and reflections. I work on some slides (I think that I will not carry so much work to Europe this summer — rather carry slides of work. Much Lighter!). And that gets boring (and still eight days to go … The room looks different: it becomes a box in reality. Small, the outside seems further away. Night has fallen. The first twenty-four ours almost done.
+++
Up early, in anticipation of the first visitors. Glad no one is here yet. And glad no one came later last night. I have a strange sleep and strange thoughts. Moving in different spaces and so on into the night. I wake up. Thinking of you and where you are.
+++
Sitting still. Listening to birds singing outside. The clouds are always interesting here. And especially in the spring: one never knows what will be seen. Storms, bright blue sky, sun, and so on. Shadows cross the close hills. Black against the white clouds. Flat earth out one way — to the east — and jagged mountains to the west.
+++
Oh yes. I hope you don’t mind: this letter may be the only ‘real’ documentation of this performance. I have made a few Polaroid portraits, and everyone is signing the guest book, but other than that, there is not so much to worry about — this is one important point about the entire performance — that there will be no evidence to show off later. The only people that can experience this are the ones who come down and visit or call… (and you, since I am writing this).
+++
So, I shall put down here some of my impressions so far.
+++
Conversations. With one person, with two persons, with three persons, with four persons, with five persons. Different things happen. It seems that two or three is the limit for a conversation that begins to de-construct the barriers of the Ego. Not that this is a new idea — but I think perhaps that I should keep the numbers of people at any one time to 2 or 3. In the sense of keeping the intensity up. Although I have only two rooms here. And so on.
+++
What else? Well. I am stuck here. And I look at the grass lawn with some envy, the kids playing on it. Oh yes. I have decided to move out of this place on the 17th. Gees, so you won’t get to hang-out here for too long. And then we will be vagabonds on the road. Yes. In the Heart of Amurika. Shit. I can’t even imagine this summer. There seems so much to do.
+++
And I pace the house. And begin to watch a storm come in from the west. The clouds large and dark, edges soft and diffused against the sky. Listening to the mariachi music (‘e1 mexique). And, so, I will do a self-portrait for you right now, okay? I make it. It now dries. I look too serious. (the storm comes closer). But, on day two, this is what I look like.
+++
Frightening, isn’t it? Looking at photographs of someone. What are they. And I think into the future of Avantiere with Werner and the rest of the folks. That I may not make objects like the others do. I may end up working like Joseph Bueys. (the co-founder of the German Green Party. or something.) He was a true avant-garde and a true revolutionary. And that is where I am turning.
+++
Or. So. The next day, the Thesis begins. Phone calls all morning even though it has not officially begun. Friends in NY and Virginia. Cool, But my breakfast goes cold.
+++
Much later. Far into the next day. A quiet spell. After a very late night. I begin this performance with about ten good friends. Like it should begin. (including a renegade group: we named them the Minstrels of Distress, visiting with some madness for a serenade at 0200 this morning. It will be a long week, I can tell. And I am happy that there is a break here. I just wonder how many times there will be here. to sit in silence. Oh, yeah, I wish you were here in this box, and we could perform… It is strange to look out the window and see the outside. And not be able to go out.
+++
Later this same day. Pretty quiet. A few calls — a good friend, a Japanese painter — a true painter, one who lives to paint — calls to say that he is in town from LA for a few days, and so he will stop by later this week. Cool. And then, surprise, my Thesis Chairman calls and comes over: ends up staying for two hours, talking. We speak about many things, including this planned move to Iceland. Whatever, I am pleased that he comes by — and speaks so directly with me. And so it goes. But, now, I am alone again with my thoughts and reflections. I work on some slides (I think that I will not carry so much work to Europe this summer — rather carry slides of work. Much Lighter!). And that gets boring (and still eight days to go … The room looks different: it becomes a box in reality. Small, the outside seems further away. Night has fallen. The first twenty-four ours almost done.
+++
Up early, in anticipation of the first visitors. Glad no one is here yet. And glad no one came later last night. I have a strange sleep and strange thoughts. Moving in different spaces and so on into the night. I wake up. Thinking of you and where you are.
+++
Sitting still. Listening to birds singing outside. The clouds are always interesting here. And especially in the spring: one never knows what will be seen. Storms, bright blue sky, sun, and so on. Shadows cross the close hills. Black against the white clouds. Flat earth out one way — to the east — and jagged mountains to the west.
+++
Oh yes. I hope you don’t mind: this letter may be the only ‘real’ documentation of this performance. I have made a few Polaroid portraits, and everyone is signing the guest book, but other than that, there is not so much to worry about — this is one important point about the entire performance — that there will be no evidence to show off later. The only people that can experience this are the ones who come down and visit or call… (and you, since I am writing this).
+++
So, I shall put down here some of my impressions so far.
+++
Conversations. With one person, with two persons, with three persons, with four persons, with five persons. Different things happen. It seems that two or three is the limit for a conversation that begins to de-construct the barriers of the Ego. Not that this is a new idea — but I think perhaps that I should keep the numbers of people at any one time to 2 or 3. In the sense of keeping the intensity up. Although I have only two rooms here. And so on.
+++
What else? Well. I am stuck here. And I look at the grass lawn with some envy, the kids playing on it. Oh yes. I have decided to move out of this place on the 17th. Gees, so you won’t get to hang-out here for too long. And then we will be vagabonds on the road. Yes. In the Heart of Amurika. Shit. I can’t even imagine this summer. There seems so much to do.
+++
And I pace the house. And begin to watch a storm come in from the west. The clouds large and dark, edges soft and diffused against the sky. Listening to the mariachi music (‘e1 mexique). And, so, I will do a self-portrait for you right now, okay? I make it. It now dries. I look too serious. (the storm comes closer). But, on day two, this is what I look like.
+++
Frightening, isn’t it? Looking at photographs of someone. What are they. And I think into the future of Avantiere with Werner and the rest of the folks. That I may not make objects like the others do. I may end up working like Joseph Bueys. (the co-founder of the German Green Party. or something.) He was a true avant-garde and a true revolutionary. And that is where I am turning.
“The object of a great revolution is the attainment of clarified, secure conditions ensuring a general stabilization on the basis of what is possible at the moment.: 00 R. Wilhelms translation of the I Ching.
+++
And. Well. Perhaps this time in ‘cdsland will be a time to bring the forces of the revolution together, consolidate them, understand them, and then begin the action. Do you still want to sit in a box with me? And the next day arrives. The wind gets strong. And I wonder at my own writing, I am making some words from the special madness of this isolation. (Although I am glad that no one comes to the house now. And I get nervous just thinking about how many will be coming in the next days. Only about fifteen, well, twenty, and so many more. I will have information, just seeing ul whoulnone actually shows up, and who doesn’t. And, well. I just don’t know. Still, how this performance ul isulnone what it ‘means.’ and so on. I feel like I am shifting into and out of dreams every second, just following my mind to places here and places there. shit. and so on. Unable to focus on anything precise and sharp. No critical thinking. (the wind brings a bit of rain even with the sun still shining. And with watching the rain, mind drifts for many minutes. The background sound of the Latino radio announcer. A familiar voice from a Sunday morning show. He speaks about activities in the Latino community. (one storm has passed).
+++
I go to sit out on the Balcony. And read a pamphlet “Marxists and Christians” given to me by a Soviet friend: written in the USSR. It is very interesting and I have just written to the author. It will be interesting to hear from him — he has an extraordinary insight into the destructive phenomenon that so is a part of Western Culture these days. And on the radio, musik from the Andes (Peru). And my mind slips and falls. I sit down with a fat book, and begin to drum on the cover. Not sounding so well. Listening in my mind to your drumming. And feeling your energy. That it is night fall for you, after our small exchange of words. And this Madness continues, and only into the second 24 hours a bit. And much more to go . I do feel some creeping Madness, but a righteous Madness, a clear Madness. Leaving much open, and nothing closed. I do not know. And in this not-knowing, I think I shall find something. I find some changes in this thing in my throat. But do not still understand the destiny of all this. Jah Rastafari. King of Kings, Lord or Lords, Conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah. Jah. Ras Tafari Makonnen. And so it goes, love. I Chant Down Babylon here. In some way. Not anything else. As Babylon sticks into my throat. And so on. I change some way. But I do not know how at all. And might not know precisely until I may look back from some vantage in the Desert, this summer. In the blessed Desert, the High Mojave. some herbstalk. Deep in thought, deep in mind, wishes push into the body. To make all this a physical evolution. And not such a surficial thing. Substance. And, please, my love, here I drift in mind, if you wish to listen to me read this, that is what you should do, bring this with you and I shall read it in the dark of the moon in the desert.
+++
Another small storm tracks through, obscuring the sun for a few moments.
+++
Bright clouds, sun. Some Arab students bring family out to play volleyball in the park outside the window. A picnic. And all that. I go on.
+++
Vibrating in head. Hearing voices, my voices, in conversation with?
+++
Perhaps I should just hold onto this until you are here? There is so much strangeness, I do not want you to think that I am lost in space of thought. But just allowing some freedom of thought-to-thought, the untied movement of mind jumping, drumming into the soul. And all that. God, I wish you were here. And I also think about my EgoCentricity. How I am with all these people. Yet a good number of visits. And a few moments of silence here. Well, perhaps not silence. I look down at this machine, and begin to listen to the sounds around. First, the static clapping of this machine, this typewriter. Slamming letter to letter to word to sentence. Punctuation. Leaving spaces. Noisy spaces, spacing. But I listen to the sound purely, or, try to. When I pause to think what to write, the sound leaves me. Re-producing thoughts make sound. Make the energy of sound. When silent thinking, the silence is replaced by the Musik. As I have written in so many letters, in the mail, that I was grooving on some kind of musik when I was writing and thinking about what to write. What was on the radio or RayDeeOh, as I-and-I say. What was coming down and all that. I just still listening. To the musik, now, Burning Spear. A tape from some other day in some other space. Musik. And then behind all that, the noise of children in play. All expressions of life in that play (one wonders if the culture has yet begun its insidious action of destruction of play in these same children. One wonders. Whether the Ideologues have had some say in the living dreams these children live within. Turning the seeing into some only sight. Deducing, reducing, destroying that pure first sight. (one does not need second sight until, unless the first is taken away). Good god. And the sounds of the road, some motorcycles drive by loudly. You will hear them: yes, even the sounds will be different. Compared to Germany, it will be loud and crazy. People here do not hold back so much although in other ways, they hold back more (or, maybe it’s just me? But just a small military presence: like most of the world. Amerika exports arms so there will be no war here. Although you might see in the newspapers in K’f6ln, about the “drug-war.” It is a pure excuse to bring hard troops into enforcing the will of the government and the powers that control, or seek total control of the place, this USA. Amurika. I just don’t know.
+++
And so, this action goes on. Moving into 48 hours. Almost 200 to go. I wonder. I wonder. My brother calls from New York City. And we talk calmly. For a time. About “what’s happening.” And then when the call is done. I again (in retrospect), I feel I have not said enough. That in person I repeatedly do not exist in the fore-front of being. And that I am almost not “here.” I am somewhere else. Thinking ahead into the future, or reflecting some mythical past. But, what is the here and now? How does one exist in that place? It is terrible to overlook the development of the understanding of the here-and-now. Yet that is what I am left with. That I do not have an understanding of how to be here-and-now. Can I know this from clear dialectic examination (in the retrospect) of my actions? That I might improve the future actions? Or perhaps let go of this rational understanding and experience. I begin to see the pattern of incomplete action. Holding back. Some miserable exercise this “Dialogue” turns out to be. It merely points out my weaknesses, my lacks, my inabilities, my mistakes. A pointless exercise in self-critique. And continuously leaves me with no understanding of the change that needs to occur. And perhaps I have formulated a question for the I Ching in this. Yes. The I Ching.
+++
And in some ways it speaks. Fellowship. Possession in Great Measure. It leaves me with positive feelings and some understanding. Confidence. But is this the way just to earn confidence? Or does one push further? Interpreting the signs, the answers. Yes, is this non–reflexive state merely the pushing on? Just pushing on into the. As I have said in my writing. And so on. So it goes. And so. Und so. encore. Etc. I stop to make some postcards. (I get a couple postcards back from Mail Art places.) And wonder what all that is about. But push on into another place altogether. I keep writing. Like this is some thesis. But I would wish that I could make something of this. (vanity). And so on. Into the night. And the evening is quiet. I certainly wonder about the number of participants. Fear? of me? what Others might take away from this. Independent of my action or mis-action. Thinking of ways that I can be positive. But perhaps thinking too much. Just keep acting. And so on.
+++
But even the Dialectic is a constructed form. This check and balance and all that. Like, I don’t need to entertain the guest by entertainment. I must do my work. Process rather tan result. (this is the principle related to the dis-need for documentation). That documentation is another rational pitfall. Okay. So, the movement is cut off (the secret of the non-broadcast-audio-telephone conversations. One-sided.) I keep writing. While no one is here. And wonder about the success and failure of thin happenings like this. I may claim absolutely nothing. This is some modesty? No, not even that. (I interrogate meself): What is this for. ?
It is for nothing. (It isn’t for nuthin’.) It is. Uh. Well, long story.
Got nothin’ to do with, well, I just don’ know.
+++
No dialectic. Nothing direct. Not spontaneous, not unstructured. And boredom. The repeat visitors. And who they are. And that focus of uplifting. Not sure whether that attention is good or not. What of all the others that won’t come. And the fewer that show, the fewer that, well, the more typing that I get done. Shit, man. But silence echoes failure in the Modern part of my mind. (the “spiritual minarets” fall. are fallen, much before the Final Babylon.) And then I stretch not so much. I feel that some-one will come here soon. I feel the energy.
+++
And I am presumptuous. Not feeling true. I pace to and fro in front of this machine. Here into the third day of this. The time passes slowly. And few come. Going with it. Fuck, I just patter loosely. Dis-continuous. And that the conversation with self lags into more and more dysfunction. Each passing hour of confinement. That the confinement becomes more central. That I do not mind this space. For I have lived in Cities. In small spaces. And marked spots. Defined spaces of other’s lives. But here. Well. in my space. temporarily mine. Hah. Ownership. But I must remove the mask of confinement just as I put on the mask of ownership. And again, that Egocentricity. This is the hardest ‘ism to shed. Egoism. It is the heart of all exclusive ideologies.
+++
If the root be in confusion, nothing will be well-governed — says Confucius.
+++
Jesus. Motions , every one, affect the path. The path climbing treacherous cliffs. And sliding down smooth faces of relative curvature. And Quantum spaces. Words come to a costumed rescue. (getting lost in some place). I have much the otherwise. Directness. and more of this silence. The space changes with presence. The evolution changes with presence. But how? Is it forward motion. A do not wish to just explore and relate. Shit. More of the same to be stripped off. Better to ignore the past and the future, just exist in this room. Forward, backward drop away when there is no past or future. Progress and evolution, digression. they vanish. Into the silent explorations. The dis-documented.
+++
Who cares. Pen to paper. No-shows. What is all this. What is all this. I-and-I just doing the normal. The same. Not so strange or synchronous. Just reactive? Well. No. But I have not been able to cross that place.
+++
So, I ask dreams to mete some answer to the throat. I ask this outside the I Ching. But with the same. The same? And so I think to do work on what needs to be “done.” What of that. I think to edit contact sheets, to decide what needs doing, printing, for the future. But, I suppose I must avoid the trap of sameness, in difference. That I have nothing to offer. That explains the silence. But what to hold to. I go with no actions. No creations. And only the amigos, amigas. Some strangers, and I am a silent bidder. And Critical of all words. And persons. What is this. More verbiage. but not more understanding. Spring Break in Hell? What I did after I got back to School after Spring Break. Uh, titles. I sat in my house for two weeks. And not even my house, just my apartment. And got many phone calls or so. That people call sometimes. But here a silent night. I suspect that some might come here late. God, so, do I go to bed? Or just stay here at this infernal desk. That haunts. And I have not yet made much moves into the light.
+++
I dream of the landscape of my childhood in winter. Or, rather, I dream dreams set in the landscape of my childhood in winter.
+++
Far into the third day. Maybe pushing into the fourth or so.
+++
Musik. But pushing into some Lennon/Ono. Stuff. And different thoughts and juxtapositions. With not so much happening. In a way. And different than yesterday. I still write, though. And continue the experiment. Better than yesterday, in one or two ways. Like just writing here. With absolutely nothing to be said at all.
+++
I just write. Looking out windows and all that. Football players and Children. Like, I got nothin’ ta say.
+++
The next. Ex Post Facto. I continue the steps of the institution. And the Committee convenes. And that is over quick, with not so much dialogue. But over. Another hurdle. Gone by, another let-down of the system, I should not have expected as much, anyway. Perhaps I need a bigger system to counter. Yup. And so on.
+++
Mail pours in. Chris and Wendy bring …
(here the typing clatter-chatter ends, and the performance continues without remarking…)
… [here the typing clatter-chatter ends, and the performance continues without remarking and with minimal documentation] …