posted
  • place: Prescott, Peter's Valley, Bedford, Reykjavík, Selatangar
  • enclosure: https://neoscenes.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2000/06/200006-09-008/200006-09-008-desktop.m4v 1584579065 video/mp4

Tape 008

Between 1999 and 2005 I had a relatively decent Sony miniDVcam* that I carried on the road after shooting the final rolls of 35mm film on one of my Nikon F2a systems in 2000 and before getting a mediocre Nikon D200 DSLR in 2006. The resulting tapes are a complex mix of places, people, events, and encounters. Much of this footage has not been seen aside from fragments that I would occasionally use in my live improv VJ remix work. Rather than it all staying buried in the archive, now that I have the server capacity, I’ll be uploading some of the couple hundred digitized tapes in their unedited entirety.

*which, of course, looks like crap compared to even the worst phone video these days … … the general plight of the media artist: an ever-technically-irrelevant archive.

This digitized tape #008 was shot from August through September 2000, with approximate and general timecodes:

00:20 Prescott, AZ: Loki’s US family birthday party; 01:30 Peters Valley, NJ: diner, waterfall, river, cave; Bedford, NY: trampoline; 15:00 Reykjavík, IS: Sara’s shop; harbor; art opening/party; performance; 25:00 Loki’s Icelandic kids birthday party; 36:00 Selatangar, IS: hiking with Loki; 43:00 circuit; Reykjavík, IS: Hafnarhús: Magnus Palsson‘s performance; 54:00 Loki’s Icelandic family birthday party; 58:00 cafe9.net workshop.

Folks appearing: Loki (with friends and family), Lexie, Trey, Andrea, Bill, Zander, Simon, Maxie, Sara, the cafe9.net hosting crew, and many other Icelandic artists and their enthusiastic public … of special historical note, documentation of a couple of Magnus Palsson‘s scripted sonic performance pieces starting ~46:10 …

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

~/Connected

massive busy-ness over the weekend with the ~/Connected conference at the Lasipalatsi. Tapio had asked me earlier if I could help out with activities on the ground, and although I was pretty busy anyway, I was around to help, then ended up being quite involved in the discussions, and even made a short public presentation at the end in Bio Rex, dealing with best-practice scenarios for education/learning situations. Polar Circuit was held up as that model in learning situations, along with the idea of open-platform, socially balanced situations.

/~Connected press releases for local and translocal use

Cultural industries and independent media cultural production are of primary importance for Finnish policy development, as a new program, “Content Finland” is being drafted during next year. In each European country, goals of both national and transnational media culture have been met with different strategies. Through /~Connected knowledge and shared experience, it is possible to form models of best practice – and principles for both national and European policy.

The driving force behind this event and series of other meetings prior to it is the ECB, European Cultural Backbone (https://ecb.t0.or.at/, https://monoskop.org/European_Cultural_Backbone [Ed: now only a historical archive on monoskop]). It is a network of media cultural organizations, centers, and active individuals throughout Europe, not only European Union member countries. To quote Dr. Peter Wittmann, Austrian State Secretary for the Arts, “The European Cultural Backbone is the logical extension of this ongoing dialog between cultural practitioners and policy makers regarding strategies of “practice to policy” on both national and European levels.”

The Main organizer of /~Connected, the Lasipalatsi Media Center, also seeks to discuss how European media centers could increasingly collaborate. How to best connect venues of presenting media culture and sites that produce it? Support of networks, bandwidth, mobility, distribution and production are key factors for policy discussion.

Traditionally, in a European democracy, public space has been defined through access to public institutions, freedom to move in city spaces and through the existence of certain democratic instruments such as public libraries and publicly supported broadcast media. New media, Internet in particular, has made it possible to more actively shift content production to smaller units or groups. Creation of public space can mean support for content production and communication that does not focus on a single mass audience, but particular communities (or consumers) and layers within the larger society and the networked world. Major issue for debate is thus to consider, how to best connect various models of best practice and policy that enable cultural production in a networked, changing Europe.

The seminar takes place in the very center of Helsinki, in Lasipalatsi Media Center (https://www.lasipalatsi.fi). Meals during the conference program are provided for by the organizers and there is no attendance fee. We are providing air fare and accommodation for a group of participants that comes from smaller media centers and organizations. We are happy to assist your travel arrangements by providing information on accommodation and flights.

/~CONNECTED brings together practitioners, producers and policy makers within contemporary media culture in Europe. Its attempts to create exchanges of experience and information between organizations and individuals from different fields: media cultural organizations, media centers, policy makers on a local, national and European level, media art organizations, corporate research labs and university researchers.

Following events such as P2P conference in Netherlands and Networking Centers of Innovation in Austria, it explores the ways in which local experiences can be compared, exchanged and rewritten to form models of best practice.

The event will officially launch the ECB, European Cultural Backbone, a network based on trust and a shared interest to promote a rich media cultural practice, which already flourishes in Europe. The network proposes that an Internet Backbone or a set wide bandwidth would be subsidized by the EU in order to enable transnational media production, broadcast transmission of events and inexpensive communications. The ECB acts as an advisory body for the policy makers nationally and within the EU.

/~CONNECTED is very much about the goals of the ECB:

1) Bandwidth for media culture
2) Support for models of best practice
3) Active investigation of what European media culture consists of
4) Enhanced networking between media cultural organizations, individual hubs” and policy makers.

/~CONNECTED refers to the ways in which media cultural local practices and organizations create collaboration, projects, discourse and policy across and partly independent of national borders. Emerging networks, projects and content are no longer international, but translocal by nature, already connected.

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

bitter-sweets

Sanna sends a bar of white chocolate that Anna-Maija hand-delivers to my office. just as I am looking up the street address in Helsinki to send a card. synchronicity. it is snowing all day heavily. drifting, and I decide not to go swimming in the evening after making a circuit of town to the bank and grocery store. cold. I need a different kind of hat — a balaclava face-mask I think. I cringe against the wind as it whips around my eyes, turbulent flow that makes me cry. inside the wind makes a low-frequency sucking noise on the stove ventilator, but since most windows here are triple-glazed, outside noise pollution is minimal. if you hear the wind, that means it IS serious! the internal heating system which is some combination of radiative hot-water heaters under the windows, along with a forced-air duct system is the source of the greatest environmental noise.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

walls of academia

hike with Mark and Loki. first we drive from Boulder up through Gold Hill and on to Wild Basin. I suddenly realize that since Wild Basin is actually within the boundary of Rocky Mountain National Park, there will be a ten dollar use fee which is just too much to deal with, so we turn around and head for Brainard Lake which ends up having a five dollar use fee. both these developments are new — at least within the last five years. things change. we do a leisurely circuit of Long Lake before having to race back for dinner with

EJ, Bridget, and Eliott. ice cream and a stroll on the pedestrian mall. Colorado has this possibility of massively splendid scenery within a short drive from urbanity. the big weakness is the absolute cultural vacuum. and too many Californians moving into the state. ah hmmm. and the University suffers from the following malaise:

Institutions of higher education have not taken advantage of the resources and energies circulating beyond the walls of the academy. As a result, cultural analysis is separated from the very condition of its own possibility. To overcome the isolation of the intellectual critic, it is necessary to enter the mainstream of culture by leaving the confines of print. — Taylor and Saarinen

is startling to me because the telematic event described in their book Imagologies takes place in 1992-3. it makes what I am attempting as educator/activist/artist seem dated and lacking an experimental edge (a feature of much of my creative work — it appears retro and staid somehow). of course, I stand by my thesis that the being of dialogue is a condition that is regenerated or reborn in each successive moment, a condition that gives the edge of immediacy and presence to all communicative attempts, but what about the actual results of what I am doing? With the knowing that success in telepresence is predicated on attention, concentration, and focus, events that I facilitate directly address these factors and push the envelope.

posted
  • place: en route Düsseldorf, Germany - Vienna, Austria

detours

What is it that we need in life? What is it that we are constantly grinding after in a state of calm and casual disinterest? What do we care about?

Heading to Vienna now. Another stop. Various plans have been detoured, so it appears that the entire month of March will be something of a vacation, so I need to make it that. And not stress so much about it. Back to work at the end of the month in Kiel after some relaxation and conversation and pleasant diversion. Nothing terribly productive, or labor-intensive. Besides, who cares anyway? Planting future seeds, but these seeds need the kind of regular tending that only an idiot would endure. I think I will really try to concentrate on, huh….? Doing my own thing?

Discovering that my abilities with the machines are much more limited creatively than my ideas would suggest. I freely admit that I am no expert on many software platforms, and really am not so good at producing finished work. The only decent work I have done digitally are the video pieces produced on the Avid system I had access last summer to at Polar Circuit in Tornio. In that instance I had dedicated access to a system for three straight weeks, with no real interruptions. Other attempts—especially with audio, which I aesthetically am quite tuned into—seem to stumble on software and consistent access issues. An inability to concentrate on production versus organization of information also seems to be a hurdle that keeps me from moving forwards.

True to other times, there are snow flurries between Nürnberg and Austria, in this bit of higher country. I recall two years ago, passing this way in April—as documented in this very travelog—snow and slow going for the track construction that is ongoing now. They are in the process of constructing a new high-speed line between Würzburg and Vienna.

posted
  • place: Center of the Universe, San Luis Valley, Colorado

rgb

two sketches from the Center of the Universe…

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

creative potential

0300 and I am just thinking of going to bed. So I do, and now it is 1300, and I am in the middle of shaking down the AVID video system, preparing to do some video work this evening when the sun moves to the north. Unfortunately the studios are on the west side of the building and they have not installed window shades yet in the new building, so things are awkward for serious work. I feel as though in an electronic haze. Like these machines that I am surrounded with are sucking the life out of me, despite the “creative potential” that they represent. I am rather desperate to get something done, but this phantom of doing rather than being seems appropriately distant and immaterial. Discussions take place within the context of the spectacular array of equipment available to us here at the college. This is a familiar sight in, Finland — colleges and university (and, for that matter, high schools) swimming in a sea of technology that would make folks at most other universities salivate profusely. For a student base of under 200 students, many of which are involved in other areas of study, there are four AVID production studios, several analogue video editing suites (Betacam included), numerous large MAC and PC-based studios and facilities totaling around 70 machines, full-blown TV and sound recording studios, cameras of every variety, totally new buildings wired with high-speed LANs, servers for the internet, and so on… The downside of this is the problem of getting qualified and creative instruction for the students. At every institution that I have either visited or lectured at, I hear the same complaints from faculty and students — that there is a shortage of funding for getting teachers in to these same schools. I will probably do a tour here in the spring, doing short teaching gigs at about six different schools scattered across the country. For me it is a good opportunity to teach in good facilities and with eager students, and for the schools, the exposure to outside influence seems essential. Those of us who are here for the Polar Circuit project are constantly amazed at the open-ness shown here — the project itself is a miracle of conditions that would be difficult or impossible anywhere else. A bunch of crazy artists given carte blanche to use a fantastic array of tools that would otherwise lie dormant all summer, and the school opens its doors completely to us, offering everything including an enthusiastic handful of students who are taking good care of us.

posted
  • place: en route Reykjavík, Iceland - Stockholm, Sweden - Helsinki, Finland

media base & swimming

Well, I arrive after another numbing leg of travel, car (thanks Niels for the ride at 0500 from the house to the bus), bus to the airport, plane to Stockholm, plane to Helsinki, bus to town, and I give Kati a call to let her know I have arrived, and a long, long walk to her place. Here at MUU MediaBase, very happy to be online again with a fast connection. Spend the day catching up on some urgent emailing and this web site, where I have to up-date numerous things. In the afternoon, Kati sends me off to the Olympic Park swimming pool which has just opened for the summer. Good choice. I actually do a rather heavy workout and am invigorated (well, except my back) by some good sun and water. Met with Tapio and Susanna last night at Moscow Bar, he was just back from Tornio checking the situation for the Polar Circuit project which starts in a couple weeks. They are off tomorrow to Undisclosed Locations for a REAL VACATION before the summer activities seriously kick in. I headed home early to rest my back which is seriously aching these days.

posted
  • place: Reykajvík, Iceland & Tornio, Finland
  • enclosure: https://neoscenes.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/1997/05/19970503-hi8_infinite/19970503-hi8_infinite-desktop.m4v 47908832 video/mp4

memories of three infinite half-spaces

00:03:00, Hi8 NTSC, stereo audio, 1997

An infinite half-space is a mathematical tool used to construct, model, and analyze a theoretical spatial representation of the earth or any situation where two unlike substances are coming in direct contact. A sphere of infinite diameter is bisected by a plane. This plane represents the surface of the earth. Above this plane is nothing (or, a dialectric constant, depending on the model), below is the substance of the earth itself, made up of whatever defined substance the geophysical model-maker constructs. In this short video, a cycle of memory becomes the constructive framework for three transits across seemingly infinite half-spaces. Reality is subsequently transformed by the infinitude of the model. The concentration of the tool-wielder is momentarily lost. The plane is skewed and rotated 90 degrees,and contains non-linear imperfections that cause instability in the model calculations. Nothing is what it seems. Quantum Darwinism perhaps? The Observer shares the vision — despite the specious chaos generally reigning — and provokes the transformation of idiosyncratic isolation into infinite union.

The raw material for this video came from Hi8 NTSC footage filmed on location at the foot of Langjökull, Iceland in May 1997 at a scene of catastrophic post-volcanic jökulhlaup (sub-glacial flood-burst) the previous year. It was dumped directly into an AVID digital video system for non-linear editing during the Polar Circuit artists residency program in Tornio, Finland. The video imagery was heavily processed with existing AVID image-manipulation options and then a final mix was made. The six-track stereo audio, also taped in Iceland, was mixed down from a variety of sources including a flock of gulls and terns attacking a school of small fish near Akureyri, an old Toyota station wagon driving the ring-road, and other ambient samples. Countries of production: Finland and Iceland.

posted
  • place: Stockholm, Sweden

art consumption

Well, let’s see. Long day today. Started out at the Breaking Eyes show at the new space Fargfabriken. Tapio Mäkela of MUU Media and Jeremy Welsh were curators of the show which included works by Andy Best & Merja Pustinen, Mats Hjelm, Simo Alitalo, Marita Liulia, and Palle Torsson among the eleven works by fourteen artists. They had a PC connected to the internet, so I was, finally, able to at least check my mail, and fortunately there was nothing of great importance… I also took a detour to Galleri Index which had a small show of photographic works by Larry Clark, Collier Schorr, and Søren Martinsen. Clark’s work was from the Teenage Lust in Tulsa (is that the right title?) era, while the two other photographers were showing recent works. On the way back through the Old Town, I took a detour down along the docks where there were a number of warships docked. One, the HMS Gävle, was open for the public viewing, so I made the circuit of the deck, looking at the weaponry of the King, and wondering why these objects of war still draw me to their clean functional forms. Is it a mute feeling of satisfaction that the horrors of war have not sullied the tidiness of technology?

Objects change Objects have limits Objects have meaning Objects exist in Time Objects carry content Objects exist in Space Objects have form Objects are found Objects are (not) recognized Objects are watched Objects are worshiped Objects are held Objects are described Objects are used Objects are manipulated Objects are bought Objects are sold Objects are coveted Objects are represented Objects are synthesized Objects are consumed Objects are destroyed Objects are transformed Objects are remembered and forgotten (Human Beings are Objects)

I then walked up to Galerie Roger Björkholmen, where there is an exhibition of work by Olof Glemme (the other half of the photo department faculty at Konstfack), I happened to run in to Mats Bróden, one of the founders of ArtNode (finally!). We made arrangements to meet tomorrow in the afternoon at their office. I also gave Bettina Pehrsson at Gallerie Nordenhake a call to see if there was anything else I should check out in Stockholm before I was to leave on Sunday. She suggested that we meet at the Royal Academy tomorrow evening for a performance by the students of German performance artist, Ulli (I have to update his name, sorry), who was in Stockholm at the Academy leading a ten-day performance class. Okay. and Annika Eriksson at Galleri Andréhn-Schiptjenko has a video installation of a performance by the Telecom Brass Orchestra.