posted
  • place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

end of the road

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

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

posted
  • place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

arrival and meditation

edge, Echo Park, Colorado, May 2010

Have an incredibly erotic dream with Jennifer D., back from the Culture Capitals 2000 project in Prague. Will have to email her. Otherwise watery squint-eyed perusal of the rotating stellar field in ma’ face.

This morning, a raptor circles a hundred meters away with its mate hidden in the trees along Pool Creek, making a creeeewing sound. It’s the same noise it made when I wandered over to the creek earlier in the morning. All the birds are noisy—it makes a multi-dimensional flow which lies on the ear with pleasing insistence. No need to move the head, as the sources are in motion and occasionally in sight.
more “arrival and meditation”

posted

A start to meditations on The Road

The road-as-pathway is a channel for the flow of energy. It is defined by socially-constructed standards and protocols: a web of socially-applied energies follow the limitations and directedness of those protocols. Roads are a human construct in response to the existence of natural blockages that divert from desired trajectories, that expend communal life-energies and threaten the control of energy resources.

The road is perhaps a synthesized mirror for the human-navigable river, that directed natural space of flow, or the ocean which is the cumulative and spatial confluence-of-all-rivers.

Practically all natural landscapes have some form of blockage as to cause a deviation to even slow and deliberate human passage. So, when there is a lack of free and easy passage, first a foot-path evolves, or is established through troddden effort. This is a trajectory for the body, with the foot leading. Seeking a pathway on foot requires vigilance and concentrated attention in many environments, though this condition is necessarily eliminated from daily life in the developed world — almost completely through the efforts to flatten, level, grade, and pave large swaths of the Terran surface.
more “A start to meditations on The Road”

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

many impressions, no time

where to start. what to write about (if there ever is time to write here). impressions, expressions, observations, actions. food shopping: Woolworths, Coles, and the thousand-and-one small Asian food shops, and Paddy’s Market, 7-11s for expensive junk food, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Japanese fast-food. vomit stains smeared on black cut-basalt (rhyolite?) sidewalk paving. up-scale-chain consumer fashion depots line George Street, my commuter trajectory. old Ruger, Winchester signs over one empty shop-front, across the street from the Greek guy selling swords, Swat boots, and GI dog tags. the rest of the neighborhood Chinese-owned shops. restaurants with open fronts, tables spilling out onto the sidewalk, with one Lebanese place with hookahs. and the pubs, packed from Thursday through Saturday nights. late. girls with impossibly high-heels limp along tugging down impossibly short skirts that hike up and show pantied crotches at every tottering step. blokes, the NRL blokes, with bulging tee-shirts and vaguely Maori tattoos on biceps. and the suits. the business class. busy, very busy, very very busy. Japanese manga girls or so, adorned, liberally with things and things with accessories and feathered black hair and pale milky skin. Anglos, red patchy skin, (it’s the latitude), sometimes Tilley hats (I can’t bear to wear my new one at risk of appearing like one of these). baseball cap will have to do along with plenty of sunscreen on my UV-challenged nose. more “many impressions, no time”

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

Splinter Orchestra

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(00:31:52, stereo audio, 61.2 mb)

Better late than never. Postings fall by the wayside in the stead of other text-generation. Shannon invites me along to a late evening live broadcast performance of The Splinter Orchestra on the New Music Up Late program from the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Goossens performance hall/studios across the street from UTS in Ultimo. Small intimate event—nothing like live-broadcasting to intensify the energy of a performance. it is energy that governs this form of performance, like all other performance situations, but especially when moving somewhat outside the established paradigm for music. restraint drove it. by this I mean that a low-level seeking-to-arrive at a ephemeral flow, a confluence that gathers all available input but is never overwhelmed by any one source. this generates a certain tension which then carries the listener through time with an imminence of potential.

Not very satisfied with my image documentation, though. Just haven’t been in a documentation/concert mode for such a long time. Images get stale at some point, and I never did like to interject the snapping camera into live performances unless there is plenty of ambient noise (think Ted Nugent).

posted
  • place: en route Cedaredge - Coal Creek, Colorado

back into the mountains

head into the West Elks in the continuing moist weather. north and east from Cedaredge via Paonia. stop in a downtown cafe there for some actual caffeine and fresh muffins, a short ramble around town and a stop at the Forest Service office for local advice on where not to go. on through Somerset, a coal mining town, up the North Fork of the Gunnison River passing several other coal mines to Anthracite Creek, and then off south into the National Forest at Coal Creek until arriving at the campsite at the confluence of Robinson Creek and Coal Creek. nobody else around in the rain. plenty of wood, paddocks for the horses, gonna be a wet one. the spring-like weather continues day after day very incongruous with the norm.

posted
  • place: Paulden, Arizona

Verde Springs

I join Joanne on a half-day excursion to Verde Springs at the headwaters of the Verde River. she is an old acquaintance from the mid-80’s when she and Mike led biology and geology field trips at the local community college — I was on a memorable week-long one to Death Valley in the winter of 1985. the hike today is part of local Earth Day activities, although she has been leading these monthly for the last year as part of the public awareness campaign that the Center for Biological Diversity is mounting in opposition to the plans for massive groundwater mining by the towns of Prescott, Prescott Valley, and Chino Valley. a representative of the Nature Conservancy was along as well to introduce the land that they recently bought protecting one of the most sensitive areas of the riparian headwaters. there was an eclectic group of folks from a thirteen-year-old to several couples who’ve retired to Prescott. more “Verde Springs”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Infinite Jest: Kinds Of Light

Kim proposes a new microsound project, making sound tracks for the experimental films of David F. Wallace’s fictional character James O. Incadenza in the book Infinite Jest. I pick Kinds of Light as it immediately strikes a resonance and subsequently patch together an obsessive piece in 24 hours (4,444 frame splices on a multi-track of a water performance in Pool Creek Canyon (changing the course of history)), shatter-welded with audio from video footage of standing at a confluence in the West Elk Wilderness entranced by the Pele’s hair of water coming from the sun). definite sonic hyper-retinality.

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(stereo audio, 7.4 mb)

I missed Wallace during my North Amurikan vacancy of the last 20 years. surprised I hadn’t run across him randomly, though, given the households that I have ramble through on the nomadic way. George knew him and speaks highly of his character. sadly for all of us, another victim of the intensity of be-ing. I plow through Oblivion, and a couple other books that I managed to recall at the library. extremely dense. the first short story I read drove me, half-way through, into a delirious sleep from which I woke ten minutes later, not knowing where I was. jittery, caffeine-fueled, precise jewels. you see the faceting process, the cutting of the entire glittering crystal, a tedium of focus, the high-speed grind with diamond grit, a rocking, polishing movement across the charged wheel. spun tales. fiber glass. each brittle thread opening a bloodless wound which nano-gapes at the whole fuckin’ world, all at once. he would be Brakhage’s cinematographer if Brakhage was blind and able only to see the inside of his eyelids.

“Kinds Of Light” – B.S. Meniscus Films, Ltd. No cast; 16 mm; 3 minutes; color; silent. 4,444 individual frames, each of which photo depicts lights of different source, wavelength, and candle power, each reflected off the same unpolished tin plate and rendered disorienting at normal projection speeds by the hyper-retinal speed at which they pass. CELLULOID, LIMITED METROPOLITAN BOSTON RELEASE, REQUIRES PROJECTION AT .25 NORMAL SPROCKET DRIVE

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

Art and Teaching Philosophy

ART

Art, at its social core, is the trace of an engaged and immersive pathway. A pathway that conducts the circulation and exchange of creative human energies as they are attenuated and directed by a vast range of mediative (materialized) carriers. The artist is that person who opens and offers the Self in a humane seeking: to engage in a dialogue of energies with an Other. Finding a proper pathway for those energies—transmitting: simultaneously receiving the expressions of the Other—this is the moving act of creativity. Creativity is the charged flow of energies between and through the Self and the Other over relative spaces and times.

These two proto-definitions are the basis of my art and teaching praxis. more “Art and Teaching Philosophy”

posted
  • place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

right place at the right time

the Solstice, in Echo Park. what more to ask?

walking upstream in Pool Creek Canyon above the abandoned ranch. cross one branch of that major fault, and there the creek is, totally spring fed, gushing from a sand bank in the center line of that huge fault. continue up the canyon in the dry wash. find a cave with a crude lean-to fashioned in it. hung with clothes, boots, and other items. old, very old. at least 50 years, perhaps 75. on the wall are a couple rock paintings. the clothes are working ranch clothes, the rock paintings appear to be authentic. I do not disturb anything, but am very conscious that my boots are making footprints in the sand floor. continuing up the arroyo, the canyon is defined by subtle and massive structural essences of the rock. on the uplifted side of the fault, the underlying limestone shows in the wash. the down-thrown side is at least 1000 feet lower. dramatic geology, good location for field mapping exercises.

sense a mountain lion at one point, the sage is often taller than my head, so, walking through deep brush, scrambling over rockfalls, peering into the numerous caves formed in the eroded sandstone. shooting many images. this is one of the best walks taken in the area. with plenty of cool places to stop, even in the vibrating mid-day zenith of the Solstice sun — overhangs, caves, some Douglas Fir trees, large old junipers, and areas of over-hung canyon wall, rising a few hundred feet above. the absolute depth is about 800-1000 feet, perhaps a bit more. I do not go as far as I can, but stop for 30 minutes to remove fox-tail burrs from pants, socks, and boot liners, where they are beginning to drill into my skin.

Loki does not accompany me.

we later swim/wade upstream to the Green/Yampa confluence and explore. the Yampa seems a few weeks yet too strong to cross. the current is strong even in the hip-deep areas, making a perfect speed for swimming a hard workout in place. the flow of the Yampa is around 2000 (cubic feet per second, cfs), it was twice that at the beginning of the month (see the USGS water data site). in May it can reach up to 20000 cfs on rare occasions — with good snowpack and rapidly increasing spring temps. the Green is half that, and does not vary from around 900 cfs because of the Flaming Gorge Dam. there are a pair of beavers who have found a sheltered cove to hang out in, noshing on aspens up to five inches in diameter which they have cut down and dragged to the river, leaving strange markings in the sand whilst doing so.

the previous day, coming down from the Uinta Mountains, we pass the monstrous phosphate mine which has modified a significant chunk of the south side of the Uintas. I continue work on the Domination of Landscape series to be uploaded later. everywhere in the west is plenty of material for this project. unfortunately.

posted
  • place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

psychogeographic confluence

Psychogeography, yet another buzz-word in contemporary media art Worlds. Usually applied in the context of the controlled environment of urban human-scapes. A gravel and sand bar at the confluence of the Yampa and Green rivers makes an ideal counterpoint. Despite scaring off the wild geese and beaver. Where to go? The water’s too cold to ford the river, and the canyon walls too steep to climb. Around-about, then. Leaving Debord, the dérive, and the rest of the Situationists well behind with Parisian dog-shit on their shoes and Gauloises Caporal ash sticking to their tongues.

posted
  • place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

en-souled life & long-lost lack

back again. this place. and what it measures in the bodily en-souled life-ness. trekking to new spaces within the grand scaled confluence. looking, remembering, finding new places, small places within large spaces. human nature. ground turning turning under stars of immediate motion and a vastly Lightful moon on a balanced equinox time scale. Green River now brown with rain-spawned silt, cold from venting from the Flaming Gorge dam upstream, that and winter-coming snows already falling at head-water regions above 9000 feet.

no mention of the Other events, too unworkable to go with. and keeping with a long-lost lack of presence. stress of, and such.

posted
  • place: Three Rivers, California

nothing in writing

so in the way of going and going. walking in the big trees and the snow and the sky. all at the same time. and never again. the way of walking, and that the snow came in the night, while it rained in the valley. at the confluence of three rivers.

I find out in retrospective that today Yoko-Ono, my kitty from olden times, was put to sleep last month. at 21 years, she was an aged being.

posted
  • place: en route Joensuu - Helsinki, Finland - London - Glasgow, Scotland

falling

loop loop loop. the eye is taken in, the eye is taken in. the mind is numbed, the mind is numbed. replay.

I end up using the phrase “ancestral home” though I have little connection to such a reality. heading to Scotland for the first time ever. where on the Isle of Skye that generations of clan MacKenzie lived and died. I know next to nothing about them, except for the geographic proximity. and the name. and a few clouded memories of those old ones that I met as a child, ones who still could speak Gaelic, and who had been born in that land, only to come to the West of the Atlantic when life got too hard in the East. sailing west, south and west to find a new place to be. immigrants. like everybody, as though the change from immigrant to native would erase all. land without pasts. more “falling”

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

liquid skies

Friday nite. after net.culture class, jam down a beer at Meteori. but detached as hell.

forced marches, liquid skies. tatters of language still sticking to carrion corpses. use what is available. upload, download. split, divide, conquer. don’t worry about spelling, look, or feel, except when feel is skin-to-skin, and when that happens, the only worry is about why. passing passing passing. no gossip here, all the “art” meetings I have experienced, all the academic meetings, confluences, and the institutional structures applied. well, what is it — institutions are codifications of the human will to survive. that is, survival comes best to those who can spare energy to feed into collective social structures. apparently a collective can be more efficient with energy than an individual. or perhaps it is just that we are of that species-type. social animals. is it only in the space of dynamic flows can there be diversity? or, wait, that wasn’t it, walking home from KIASMA, art consumption (but free with the art card), thinking about institutions and structures, and what to say in response to criticism.