posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

cognitive decline: ipse dixit, ‘cognoscere’

cognitive task, somewhere in Delta County, Colorado, February ©2021 hopkins/neoscenes.
Engaged in a cognitive task, somewhere in Delta County, Colorado, February ©2021 hopkins/neoscenes.

What was I thinking? Dunno. What am I thinking? Gone, in the instant that the next version of the monkey-brain is implemented through a core-dump. Reality? Relative, transitory. To know? A defunct notion.

As work-for-cash becomes an ever more complex burden of coaxing information from data: brain seizes, falters, forgets, fails. Colleagues exhibit various states of disconnect and disinterest in what they do. Is this a post-Covid malaise, or what? This while almost everyone else I know—acquaintances, friends, family—are feverishly traveling, hither and yon, while, simultaneously, the conditions for climate change accelerate. Both young and old, there seems to be no room for adjustment from the status of what we were, what we had, what we consumed before the world seemed to falter, shudder, and succumb to a systemic fever dream.

I can no longer maintain remote communications and time passes ever more swiftly. I do not see a solution. I can’t manage. The alienation is complete. I cannot even keep track of the scope of those folks who I have lost contact with. Did they make it through Covid alive?

A decade ago I was actively engaged in Europe after finishing up the PhD in Melbourne and following a couple semesters teaching at CU. That was the last time I was a salaried educator (in the US), with the exception of the many invites I got to participate as learning facilitator during the three months I was in Finland, Estonia, Germany, Netherlands, the UK, and elsewhere. Good times gone. What a difference a decade makes.

Any “spare” time is spent (oh, how I despise market terminology!) in the maintenance of the house and yard. Easier to deal with the yard. Any task that I can chant away. A random four-bar sequence playing on infinite loop in braincase while engaged in a repetitive task: the meditative potential is high when the incipient material state is predictable and easily grasped on the surface: the psycho-spiritual potential to change the world, significant.

This mental laziness keeps more complex house tasks at bay: computational, multi-step planning, considerations of material use, configuration, and possible errors. Stasis: when time accelerates. Rictus: is it fun yet?

Overall, this is an unsustainable situation. Somethin’s gotta give! But what, precisely?

posted
  • place: Glade Park, Colorado

Day 18 – Hawk Moon Ridge

The Landscape becomes reflective, human and thinks itself though me. I make it an object, let it project itself and endure within my painting….I become the subjective consciousness of the landscape, and my painting becomes its objective consciousness.

…

I am becoming more lucid before nature, but always with me the realization of my sensations is always painful. I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses…. Here on the bank of the river the motifs multiply, the same subject seen from a different angle offers subject for study of the most powerful interest and so varied that I think I could occupy myself for months without changing place by turning now more to the right, now more to the left. — Cezanne

The lucidity that Cezanne speaks of gives way in the dry heat and white Light of the desert West to a (con)fusion of flows. The canyon below the house, a side-feeder to the spectacular Ute Canyon in the Monument, provides a setting for random movement driven by impulse: gravity applies. Following the topography of the canyon wall, following the central wash, following contact lines between regimes. Returning when Light begins to fail. Full moon around now allows for easy navigation, but any cloud cover can seriously compromise safety of movement. Mind flows purely no matter the sensory setting. The reflecting process, that is, the mind’s perception of what is there is perhaps the source of the objective reality. But how could we tell otherwise? Finally, we will die for this knowledge/die with this knowledge.

posted
  • place: Glade Park, Colorado

Day 1 – Hawk Moon Ridge

Heavy storm beginning in late afternoon, continuing with an especially heavy downpour. To clean out the 40-gallon garbage cans and to collect some water for augmenting the supply for the plants most proximal to the house, I move them under the down spouts. they fill in moments. 500 gallons could be collected in no time. water. Prior to the storm, everything feels dry. very dry. This storm certainly lowers the fire risk significantly for at least a short time. It’s ‘monsoon’ season now, so the storms may come every day. Between waves of rain, a flock of birds, some kind of jay, comes: it’s piñon pine nut time so they pass through, busily pecking at the downed pine cones. This morning before dawn when running the perimeter of the canyon with Luna, I disturb hundreds of them roosting along the ridge crest in the trees.

After two months of intense human contact in mostly urban regimes, finally arriving at Hawk Moon Ridge is a treat for the senses. Much work to be done — primarily digesting of all the intense encounters and their potential for future engagement. that, along with a number of texts to continue preparing, editing of several new audio works, correspondance, and retroactively adding to this blog which has gotten rather thin on content since early spring.

posted
  • place: en route Berlin-Prenzelauerburg - Köln - Aachen, Germany

big synchronicity

Well, where to start this narrative? In the PhotoWorks Laboratory on 23rd Street in Chelsea in Manhattan in 1986? Or in Karla’s flat in Prenzlauerburg in 2013? I leave there earlier than I probably need to in order to get to the Hauptbahnhof in good time for my ICE connection to Köln, and it turns out to be a good choice. I first go to the wrong tram stop, then when I get on the right one, there is a total traffic tie-up as we approach the old wall. This is because of the presence of the (US) Presidential bubble and his cortege which results in a total ban on traffic entering the entire central government sector — much of Berlin-Mitte. There had been hints of looming presence for at least a week before — Blackhawks on drill overhead, warnings about route changes posted on public transport, and so on. As traffic is totally blocked by the time the tram gets to Mauerpark, shiite! I get off and get to the U-Bahn pretty quickly, and make it to the Hbf in good time — enough to make some audio recordings (Gleis 6), have a snack and look out south towards the government sector that is completely cordoned off, musing on that impenetrable bubble that surrounds the Imperial man and his entourage.

I get on the ICE train to Köln, car 32, seat 81 or so, looking forward to a relaxed and comfortable ride with an easy transfer in Köln to the Aachen train. It looks pretty empty. A petite woman comes to my row and takes the window seat. So I say to her “I’ll move up one row since the train looks pretty empty, that way we’ll both have more room” (am I being rude?). I move up one row, but shortly another woman comes along and I am in her seat to I move back to my original seat. I settle back in and turn to my seat mate and ask her if she is from Berlin, “No, I live in New York.” Oh really, what are you doing there? “I’m a photographer.” And as I am looking at her, I am stunned, “Dora, Dora Händel?” My lord, booking the seat next to me is my old colleague from (Kathy Kennedy‘s) PhotoWorks on 23rd Street in Chelsea from 1986. PhotoWorks was one of the top two commercial custom printing labs in the photo district back in those analog days. Dora took care of all contact printing (ferro-typed Kodak Azo, thank you!). We spent many an hour in the darkroom listening to Nina Haugen among other incendiary sonic background effects.

self-portrait with Dora on the ICE to Köln from Berlin, Germany, June 2013

We hadn’t seen each other in probably 20 years or so. How effing bizarre. The immediate question becomes: What to make of this synchronicity, coincidence, sign, event, etc, etc. Too incredibly random to comprehend from any statistical level.

Fortunately we have a couple hours to catch up before she gets off in Münster (or so?). I go on to Hamm where the train is shunted (the German rail network is still suffering from major delays resulting from the heavy flooding on the Elbe River). It’s the hottest day in an already hot German summer, and after one aborted attempt to get a connection onward, and some time on the stifling platform, passengers are finally (and, to be honest, pretty efficiently) re-routed to their different destinations. When I arrive in Aachen, I pick up a form at the DB travel office in the Hbf for applying for a partial refund based on the two-hour delay I experienced. The lady at the desk helps me fill it out.

posted

avoiding drones

1. It is possible to know the intention and the mission of the drone by using the Russian-made “sky grabber” device to infiltrate the drone’s waves and the frequencies. The device is available in the market for $2,595 and the one who operates it should have computer know-how.

2. Using devices that broadcast frequencies or pack of frequencies to disconnect the contacts and confuse the frequencies used to control the drone. The Mujahideen have had successful experiments using the Russian-made “Racal.”

3. Spreading the reflective pieces of glass on a car or on the roof of the building.
more “avoiding drones”

posted
  • place: Hasselt, Belgium

The Hybrid: This and/or That

1 The Hybrid: This and/or That

2 Abstract: This text is a meditation on the concept of hybridity and hybridization as a construct of our techno-social system that attempts to safely frame (chaotic change) at the same time as to be a creative source.

3 Keywords: bifurcation, schizophrenia, catalysis, difference, gradient, edge, reaction, culture, change, innovation, control, systems

4 Introduction:

4.1 What happens when two things come together? What happens when two energies come together?  In certain situations there can be a catalytic response which allows the two disparate systems or impulses to encounter and change each other with gusto. In other situations the two systems retain their essential character and apparently do not mix, merely coming into separate relation or juxtaposition with one another. Why do humans bring things together? Why is life combinatorial and synergistic? Recognizing the expanse of territory posed by these questions, as well as the main thematic question proposed at the Hybrid Space workshop “How does art create, visualize and network hybrid spaces,” this essay will not attempt to provide answers, but rather will plot a simple course through some ideas and reflections on what may be the foundations that the questions rest upon.
more “The Hybrid: This and/or That”

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

stasis, spectacle and speed? unh-unh!

I just ran across this excerpt from Geert’s first internet-oriented book—way back in 2003—in the chapter on “tactical education” entitled “The Battle over New Media Art Education.” This is a section of that chapter titled Neoscenes Pedagogy:

The Digital Bauhaus concept may be a fata morgana amidst a never-ending institutional nightmare. The new-media subject appears at the end of a long global crisis in the education industry. Decades of constant restructuring, declining standards and budget cuts have led to an overall decline of the .edu sector. There are debates not only about fees, cutbacks in staff and privatization but also about the role of the teacher. For a long time the classic top-down knowledge delivery methods of the classroom situation have been under fire. In a response to the education crisis, the American-Scandinavian John Hopkins calls for a cultural shift towards alternative pedagogies. His pedagogy, close to that of Paolo Freire, is based on a combination of face-to-face and networked communication, keeping up a “flow of energies from node to node.” Hopkins, who calls himself an “autonomous teaching agent,” has roamed between Northern European universities and new-media initiatives and currently teaches in Boulder, Colorado. His spiritual-scientific worldview might not match mine, but he is certainly my favorite when it comes to a radical education approach. Hopkins prefers the person-to-person as a “tactical” expression of networking, avoiding “centralized media and PR-related activities wherever possible.” Hopkins’ “neoscenes” networks are “a vehicle for learning, creating and sharing that does not seek stasis, spectacle and speed.”

In a few instances, Hopkins’ “distributed Socratic teaching strategy” has culminated in 24-hour techno parties with a big online component to make room for remote participation and exchange. The challenge with the live remix streams was to find out collectively “how exactly to facilitate autonomy and spontaneity.” For Hopkins teaching is a “life practice,” an action that embodies “art as a way-of-doing.” He calls his style “verbose and densely grown (not necessarily meaningful either ;-). but I do try to say what I am thinking and practicing … ” Hopkins tries not to make a distinction between learning, teaching and being taught. “It is critical that I myself am transformed by the entire engaged experience.” As a visiting artist, and usually not a member of the “local academic politburo,” Hopkins can build up personal connections within a local structure, free to “catalyze a flexible response that is immediately relevant,” while maintaining a creative integrity that is based in praxis.

. . .

John Hopkins: “I start my workshops with a sketching of some absolute fundamentals of human presence and being in the phenomenal world. This beginning point immediately becomes a source of deep crisis for some students precisely because they are expecting the vocational top-down educational experience of learning a specific software platform and making traditional artifacts.” John finds people who focus on software platforms “incredibly boring. It’s like amateur photo-club members comparing the length of their telephoto lenses or having conversations about national sports. It’s a code system for communication that is often mindless and banal. While at some level, my students are forced to confront the digital device. I encourage them to be aware of how they are interacting with the machine, what is comfortable and what is not.”

. . .

John Hopkins compares Scandinavia and the USA, places he knows well. “Because of a well-funded cultural industry sector in Scandinavia, artists who are potential teachers are not forced into teaching as happens in the US. This has kept the stagnation of the tenure-track system, something that dogs US higher education, out of the way. In the US, artists who have any desire to live by working in some way in their medium are more often than not forced into academia because there is no other social context for them. They may or may not be teachers in any sense. There tend to be more permeable and productive interchanges between the ‘art world’ and ‘academia’ in Scandinavia and northern Europe, realized by cycling a larger number of idiosyncratic individual teacher/artists into contact with students.” Isolated campus life. slow and complicated bureaucracies, and the politically correct atmosphere at US universities are not ideal circumstances for a hybrid “trans-disciplinary” program to thrive. However, the campus setup does help to reduce distractions, once students know what they want and the resources are in place.

Lovink, G., 2003. My First Recession, Rotterdam, NL: V2-NAi Publishers.
posted
  • place: Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington and South Acton, Massachusetts

Thursday, 20 December, 1962

Worked out Trip Report — Looke like I have over $66 coming!

WIW in to see if I wanted a report listed in the weekly reports available listing from Air Inq. Svcs. I spoke of the 3-floor arrangement and the Viscomat development, which look good. He agreed that careful considerations should be given to problems of obsolescence. He spoke at the possibility of getting a consultant — Ben Diver, who is retiring from the RCE Photo Lab supervisor’s job on 01 Jan., might be available.

Spent the afternoon w/ Paul Gaudette and his cronies on the DPC Bldg. layout and spec. preliminary detail.

Clear

Called Dr. Edgerton at MIT re: my flash gun. It is rated at 40 watt-seconds. The candle-power/watt is 3-to-4 — 120-160; multiplying by 10 for the reflector factor — 1200-1600. The guide Nr. is then found by using the equation GN = (1200 x ASA/15-25) to the one-half power.

Discussed the street situation with Chaz Barringer, who had been in contact w/ Mr. Hussey; the article re: the streets was taken off the agenda so that it was not voted on.

Worked a little on the calculation of guide numbers; I’ll work out those for the films I use checking with those on the flash reflector. I can evaluate the constant this way.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

Archives in the Digital Era

Somaya passes this along, a year’s fruitful work. We had several long and interesting conversations over Chinese food in Ultimo/Sydney about the archive — a favorite topic of mine, as a media artist/archivist. The preservation of the digital is a fraught issue across the entire digitally-mediated techno-social system. Noting primarily the energy drain that an archive imposes on a system — the rubric: maintenance of information over time costs energy. period. The longer you hold onto information, the more of an energy drain it becomes. Or it emphasizes the break-even point where relevancy (energy advantage) of information is exceeded by the energy cost of maintaining it. (Connecting to Bertalanffy’s, Odum’s idea that negentropic life is information, or that “life is an informational phenomena.” [see next posting])

Hi Everyone,

You’re receiving this email as you contributed in some way to my research/writing of the Archives in the Digital Era scoping study report that I undertook for the Australia Council for the Arts from mid 2010 – mid 2011. This email is to say a massive thank you for all your contributions – large and small, direct and indirect. Without you or your organisation, this report would not have been possible.

After a considerable wait, last month the Australia Council made this report public. The full report, Australian case studies, glossary and links to international projects, licensed as a Creative Commons Australia Attribution 3.0 and all as downloadable PDFs, (as well as an online summary overview by Jackie Bailey) can be accessed via: https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/digitalarchives

As part of the scoping study, I compiled a list of links that may be of use to this topic. I have continued to add to this list over the past year or so. These can be found at: https://www.delicious.com/criticalsenses/archivesdigitalera

Please distribute this report to your networks, colleagues and contacts where appropriate. I do hope that you find it useful in your work.

Many thanks,
Somaya Langley

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

1493: Homogenocene

It looked an ice cream cone. But when I came closer, I realized that the boy was eating a raw sweet potato. His father had whittled at the top to expose the orange flesh, which the boy was licking; the unpeeled bottom of the sweet potato served as a handle.

This was at a farm about 300 miles northwest of Shanghai. Sweet potatoes are often eaten raw in rural China–a curiosity to Westerners like me. I didn’t realize that I had been staring until the boy ran to seek the protection of his father, who was hoeing a row of sweet potatoes. The father glared at me as I waved an apology. Because I don’t speak Chinese, I couldn’t tell him that I had been staring not at his son, but at the sweet potato in his hand. Nor could I say that I was staring because the sweet potato was an emblem of four hundred years of convulsive global change. more “1493: Homogenocene”

posted

technological mediation

There are different degrees in which our experience of the world is not technologically mediated, at least at the center of our perceptual and bodily experience of that world. For example, even though clothed and inside some “machine for living,” as the functionalists have termed buildings, the normally sighted and hearing person simply hears and sees what is immediate. In contrast, anyone using corrective lenses or a hearing aid clearly has sight and hearing mediated through a technology. At the level of touch, first in a surface dimension, we always can become specifically aware of the bodily surrounding immediacy of what we touch. In short, our sensory life, even if at close range or enclosed, retains that sense of direct perceivability and of bodily motility in the immediate environment. How this bodily actional and perceivable experience differs from more specifically technologically mediated experience will play an essential role in the initial difference I am trying to isolate for this analysis.

Once having located this central core of perceptual, bodily experience of an environment, it is possible to point to both its constancy and its pervasiveness. As long as I experience at all, I do so in bodily perceptual ways, and this is the case inside any technologies I may occupy. In a cold environment, I could tactilely experience the wind and chill; but if I have “chosen” to mediate that cold by wearing down clothing, I now substitute feeling the wind for feeling the warmth of what I am wearing. In this case, the “environment” is simply brought close and itself has the texture of one of the many cocoons humans employ in all non-Garden situations. The technology (clothing), however, transforms this immediately experienced environment; and it is that transformation which must be investigated. Direct bodily-perceptual contact with an environment counts as one side of the non-technologically /technologically mediated human experience that forms the focus of an entry into the analysis of human-technology relations.

Ihde, D., 1990. Technology and the Lifeworld : from garden to earth, Bloomington [etc.]: Indiana University Press.

posted
  • place: Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington and South Acton, Massachusetts

Monday, 06 August, 1962

Rec’d call from JLV re: our need-to-know at Sperry. Our contact is Mr. J. P. Whitely, Mail Station 7, Sperry Gyroscope Co., Great Neck, L.I., phone 5160LC4-3553. Made arrangement with him to spend Tuesday the 14th of August with him. I’ll send a copy of our question list down tomorrow.

Spent 2-1/2 hours at Raytheon with Paul Nicholson going over TCP-53 dated 16 June. He got Craig Philpott on the phone and I talked with him for about an hour, making 3 pages of notes.

Started to write a memo to Jim Uskavitch, putting into it the mt’l. from Raytheon.

89% RH

As I spent 2-1/2 hours at Raytheon in the AM, I picked up DCH at 5 PM.

Started to put in the form for another strip of concrete in the patio.

Our student from Madagascar, Charles Rand, will arrive at the Greyhound Bus Station tomorrow at 7:05 PM.

DCH swam 100 yards or so as part of this Eagle with other Explorers at Chelmsford.

Read more in the Genesis Flood, the authors are not favorable to the position of Bernard Ramm.

posted
  • place: Colorado Springs, Colorado

MAFFS aircraft

DIRECTORATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, HEADQUARTERS, NORTH AMERICAN AEROSPACE
DEFENSE COMMAND & U.S. NORTHERN COMMAND, 250 VANDENBERG, STE B016,
PETERSON AFB, CO 80914-3808 PHONE: (719) 554-6889 DSN: 692-6889

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MAFFS aircraft join aerial firefighting efforts in the Rocky Mountains and southwest region

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. – The U.S. Forest Service has requested and U.S. Northern Command has approved the deployment and employment of four Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS) C-130 aircraft to assist in wildfire suppression in Colorado and elsewhere in the Rocky Mountain and Southwest regions.

Two MAFFS aircraft will be coming from the 153rd Airlift Wing in Cheyenne, Wyo., and two aircraft will be from the local 302nd Airlift Wing here in Colorado Springs, Colo. The aircraft will be operating from Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo. MAFFS are important because they provide a “surge” capability that is used to boost wildfire suppression efforts when commercial airtankers are fully committed or not readily available. This criteria was recently met.
more “MAFFS aircraft”

posted
  • place: Arvada, Colorado

back to presence

Between instances of ‘seeing’ someone, it is easy to believe that perhaps we have no ‘contact’ or influence, or other expression of presence on that Other. But this seems not at all true, and is only a perverse influence of a close-to-pure material culture. In the moments, hours, days between the face-to face encounter, I am, first off, already at the effect of our prior encounter. This has changed me, fundamentally. I am elsewise already, as I depart from your immediate presence. It’s not merely a question of persistence of this change: it is far more profound than merely the ‘propagation’ of something with in my Self, being elsewise means that I am change(d). As I draw away, the change persists in the now-transformed Self. This new Self moves along, it is engaging the flow of life in a way that is different than if it had not encountered the Other: you are there. Maybe this is only another framing of memory, but what, indeed, is memory but the persistence of the effects of encounter: an effect of the change that comes from open encounter. Still seems that this could simply be labeled as ‘presence’ as it is a persistent effect of presence, and that (Cartesian) proximity is irrelevant.

This whole scenario reminds of the multi-verse theory of reality, but one question would definitely be, what is the granularity of the splitting off of a new universe? How ‘often’ would it occur — it would have to be an any juncture of change, or so… Which would seem to be asymptotically close to infinite, which I suppose is what string theory suggests, etc., etc.

posted

words and meaning: sensus commūnis

Now attempting the abstract which should have been in last week for the formal Notification of Intention (to submit). Words are reified by applied meanings (to their largely abstract sounds); yet words can be made to have other meanings. Where on this Occam’s razor is the sitting more comfortable? Or is it time to just jump off and risk coming into contact with the blade in the process, but otherwise escaping the challenge of making meaning so ‘simple’ that is ‘acceptable.’ I like to think that I say what I mean, and it just happens sometimes that the meaning is not so common, so I bear mis-understanding as a price for this act of saying. This is a prime example of the lossyness of mediatory carriers. The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) has been a constant companion since I realized I had free (university) access to it. I like the Old English and Norsk usage examples which are given for some words going back to the 8th Century or earlier. Thanks to knowing Icelandic! Best of all are the full etymologies which trace the lineage of shifting meaning as attached to these bits of symbolic chicken-scratch. ‘Commonsensical’ meanings are nothing more than the dominant understanding (or lack thereof) of the shifting sands of language. For example, the OED definition of ‘common sense,’ see below, m’gosh!
more “words and meaning: sensus commūnis”

posted
  • place: South Acton, Massachusetts

Friday, 05 January, 1962

Overcast
Cold +10°F

Stayed home to work on the car and Toro. Changed the ignition points (used a set with a nylon brush); it runs much better. In taking the Toro apart, I found the flywheel key had sheared: this allowed the ignition timing to be completely off. I took it to the Central Garage in Stowe — a B&S agent — and had a new key and washer put on. It ran for a time, but when it ran against a bit of ice outside, it stopped again. I think I’ll not fool with it anymore but get a short block.

Put radio back in the car; it still cuts out. Fixed clock in car; its winding contacts were pitted.

posted

not to be overlooked . . .

Following on to examine the trend in cosmology and unified field theories, Chalmers speculates that conscious experience may be a fundamental feature cosmologically:

“If the existence of consciousness cannot be derived from physical laws, a theory of physics is not a true theory of everything. So a final theory must contain an additional fundamental component. Toward this end, I propose that conscious experience be considered a fundamental feature, irreducible to anything more basic.”

This perception of the central nature of consciousness to the cosmological description is more acute than an academic or philosophical matter. Although the scientific description is based exclusively on the objective physical universe, our contact with reality is entirely sine qua non through our subjective conscious experience. From birth to death, we experience only a stream of consciousness through which all our experience of the physical world is gained. All scientific experiments performed on the physical world ultimately become validated by the subjective conscious experience of the experimenters, and the subsequent witnesses to the phenomena and conclusions. — Chris King

King, C., 2006. Quantum Cosmology and the Hard Problem of the Conscious Brain. In J. Tuszynski, ed. The Emerging Physics of Consciousness. New York, NY: Springer.
posted
  • place: South Acton and Boston, Massachusetts

Sunday, 01 October, 1961

Cool – overcast

Took family to SS & Church; DCH at home with a sore throat; he didn’t wear enough clothes yesterday. Winky Bliss and Ann Plotner spent the afternoon with us. Took them back in, with DCH, while we went to the Fellowship meeting. John Savara told of his trip to Czechoslovakia, giving an excellent talk; his family here had been without contact with those in western CZ for 50 years. The Czechs who are church members or minister’s children can’t get into the schools, which are all run by the state.

posted

anomia::punctilio

Code of Federal Regulations

571.203 Standard No. 203; Impact protection for the driver from the steering control system

S1. Purpose and scope. This standard specifies requirements for steering control systems that will minimize chest, neck, and facial injuries to the driver as a result of impact.

S2. Application. This standard applies to passenger cars and to multipurpose passenger vehicles, trucks and buses with a GVWR of 10,000 pounds or less. However, it does not apply to vehicles that conform to the frontal barrier crash requirements (S5.1) of Standard No. 208 (49 CFR 571.208) by means of other than seat belt assemblies. It also does not apply to walk-in vans.
more “anomia::punctilio”

posted
  • place: Bundoora, VIC, Australia

the predatory life/death: lex talionis

With the growth of industry comes the possibility of a predatory life; and if the groups of savages crowd one another in the struggle for subsistence, there is a provocation to hostilities, and a predatory habit of life ensues. There is a consequent growth of a predatory culture, which may for the present purpose be treated as the beginning of the barbarian culture. This predatory culture shows itself in a growth of suitable institutions. The group divides itself conventionally into a fighting and a peace-keeping class, with a corresponding division of labor. Fighting, together with other work that involves a serious element of exploit, becomes the employment of the able-bodied men; the uneventful everyday work of the group falls to the women and the infirm. — Thorstein Veblen

A man gets shot once in the face, and a second time to the head to ensure his demise. Other men are shot. A woman is shot. Why celebrate except in the instance of savagery, with an up-turned face, contorted with suppressed rage, making a vengeful grimace, and declaring the nation-state’s supremacy. An eye for an eye, the context lost on those who do not even know the content of the holy book coming from their own god. Instead, kill and be killed and kill and be killed. more “the predatory life/death: lex talionis”

posted

de-faced

Finally done with that process, making sure I have contact info for certain friends, and extricating the Self from that rather use-less interface after eliminating all posts, tags, friends, pages, and links. A relief.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

I left FaceBook last week …

Emile writes to the point:

I left facebook last week
by EZ

tired of the mirrors, noise and eyes.

tired of prickly, intimate and fleshy human relationships being flattened into ‘friend’-nodes, the erasure of myth by constant visibility and exhausting availability.

what kind of network society do i want to support? a closed compound of willingly data-mined crayons or an open net of chance and unpredictability? more…

I am of the same mind, and had decided a couple months ago to do the same — at the end of February. I have found it most instructive that since I put this status up:

Capped by the Goldman-Sacks pseudo-IPO for the wealthy, and in light of the massive data-harvesting of everything posted here, I am leaving FB as of 01 March 2011 — if you are interested in staying in touch, email me chazhop at gmail dot com with your contact info before that time…

I’ve gotten all of four five responses in the last month and only one at the suggested email address — of around 500 ‘friends.’ It appears that the concept of ‘friend’ in the FaceBook space is quite completely divergent from that of my own conception of friend-ship. There is a bloated vacuity in the expressed presence that the applied protocol of FB requires as a condition of participation. I hate to pop your bubble.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

at the edges of the envelope of power projection

When approaching the edge of a protocol-driven projection of power, the first thing noted is that the edge is in flux, constantly. Depending on the metric flow of the power, and the metric flow(s) of the countervailing chaos, the edge will shift at any temporal and spatial scale. The juxtaposition of controlled and un-controlled situations represents a more-or-less steep gradient from directed to random (or directed to countervailing directed) flows. A good example to consider is the two polarized and hegemonic forces of the Cold War compared to highly ordered (Imperial) military systems being projected into poorly organized social systems.

The edges of hegemonic Cold War projections of power were often located in social spaces of great chaos. But these points-of-contact generally did not impinge on the monumental and rigid structures (enabling ideological rigidity) at the core of Empire. Empire shielded itself with layers of decreasingly ordered spaces. The borders as projected closest to the two primary centers of power were defined by rigidly controlled edges across which there were few incursions or expressions of chaos. Natural borders represent a special case of intervening ‘natural’ chaotic systems which provide a temporary or long-term barrier to impingement. However, a power nexus has to deal with that chaotic border itself to maintain reasonable order there for its own population.

The space containing a vacuum of power is quickly filled whenever there is a localized energy source of a great enough magnitude to fill that space. It is more slowly filled when there is no localized concentrations of power. Again, the maintenance of an ‘edge’ is really about the maintenance of a gradient of order with a certain steepness.

An Imperial power will be more strongly be drawn into vacuums merely by the steep gradient between its highly organized (military) system and that vacuum.

The protocols of nation-statehood (currently) define geographic boundaries of power projections. However, it is clear that these boundaries and the protocols themselves are constantly in flux and themselves are finally defined by balances of power-projection on both sides. (Consider a con-federation versus a republic.) The border on chaos is a border that is under the greatest threat of alteration (because of that steep gradient mentioned previously).

posted
  • author: Eric Kluitenberg
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog

The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realize the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of tele-presence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the re-invigoration of the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favor of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style. As current systems of hyper-mobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits – most prominently in the intense debate on global warming – citizens and organizations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced tele-presence technologies.

ElectroSmog and the quest for a sustainable immobility

The ElectroSmog festival for sustainable immobility, staged in March 2010 [1], was both an exploration of this grand promise of tele-presence and a radical attempt to create a new form of public meeting across the globe in real-time. ElectroSmog tried to break with traditional conventions of staging international public festivals and conferences through a set of simple rules: No presenter was allowed to travel across their own regional boundaries to join in any of the public events of the festival, while each event should always be organized in two or more locations at the same time. To enable the traditional functions of a public festival, conversation, encounter, and performance, physical meetings across geographical divides therefore had to be replaced by mediated encounters.

The festival was organized at a moment when internet-based techniques of tele-connection, video-telephony, visual multi-user on-line environments, live streams, and various forms of real-time text interfaces had become available for the general public, virtually around the globe. No longer an object of futurology ElectroSmog tried to establish the new critical uses that could be developed with these every day life technologies, especially the new breeds of real-time technologies. The main question here was if a new form of public assembly could emerge from the new distributed space-time configurations that had been the object of heated debates already for so many years?
more “Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog”

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gait and gluteals

The foot print, the pressure of the foot on the ground, walking in mud, on grass, ice, walking on the water.

Edward Tenner’s book intimates how walking itself is, at least partially, a learned social process, with variations introduced by the prosthetic (shoes) and localized environmental responses.

I had observed one aspect of this affect when I moved to Iceland. Icelanders are generally quite healthy — statistically, their longevity is second only to the Japanese. But one formal thing I did notice is the lack of prominent gluteal muscles. Flat arses! The difference was notable, coming the ethnically diverse US, where (aside from rampant morbid obesity) arses are, well, noticeable. In Iceland, they were noticeably absent: flaccid and flat. This puzzled me for some time until winter arrived and ice began to cover everything on a regular basis. Walking with a rolling gait that emphasizes a constant forward propulsion, ending with a final accelerating push off the big toe is fine when on a solid surface with decent traction. Try that on ice (this is Ice Land, right?), and one immediately discovers how, without traction, that ‘normal’ gait destabilizes the balance as the body is expecting acceleration, but not getting it (when it loses traction). The push off with the toe is ineffectual, and when one foot actually leaves the surface, between the lack of acceleration, and a compromised vertical positioning of the body (which was expecting the legs to be more forward), slipping and falling becomes a very real possibility.

Tenner, E., 1997. Why things bite back: technology and the revenge of unintended consequences, New York: Vintage Books.

Understanding this from being aware of my own movements (and instances of compromised balance), and watching locals, I noticed several major differences between their gait and mine. The primary feature of the local walk was that both feet never really left the ground and contact was flat-footed and somewhat stiff-legged. There was a substantial time when the full sole of the shoe was flat on the ice, and it was during that time when forward acceleration was made.

If you try this yourself, you will immediately see that the glutes are not the site of any muscular effort for locomotion as opposed to when accelerating off the big toe and Achilles tendon. Could this be the source of the predominance of flat bums in Iceland?

Aside from the glare-ice technique, there was another endearing and embodied gait by farmers when walking their fields. A thousand years of overgrazing sheep has seriously compromised most of Iceland’s grasslands. As the land was overgrazed, this exposed the underlying volcanic soil directly to powerful eolian erosion which could strip meters away down to a gravelly bedrock surface in no time. When life again attempts to establish itself on that surface, after sheep are removed from the picture, it first starts as minuscule moss colonies which grow in the shelter of a small cobble or so. The moss begins to capture wind-borne soil which gradually increases the colony size which increases the turbulent capture of airborne sediment. Over a period of decades these moss colonies form a hummocky surface with a relief of perhaps 50 cm (18 inches) and a horizontal frequency of a meter or so. To walk across such a surface is absolutely exhausting unless you conform your body in a particular way. The Icelandic farmer’s gait consists of the following: hands clasped behind the back, an exaggerated forward hunch of the upper body, and the knees bent dramatically. Leaning forward, and using the bend in the knees to essentially level out the distance between the upper body and the average ground height of the bottom of the hummocks, one takes long strides where the torso never goes up and down, but rather the level changes of the hummocks are compensated by different extensions of the knees. It’s humorous to watch, but is highly effective and a very rapid gait. If one tries ‘normal’ walking, climbing up and down the hummocks, it is slow and absolutely exhausting.

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bricoleurs

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posted
  • place: Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

western terminus Yampa Bench

west terminus of Yampa Bench at the Chew Ranch, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado, May 2010

Sleep difficult, not sure why, whether simple discomfort, though the back of the truck seems very comfortable in the immediate impression, warm, soft enough, but body cannot find a comfortable position, side to side, somehow, problems. Could be that yoga hasn’t been happening in the last days. Hiking is a challenge for the body as well.

Drive up to the head of Sand Canyon, intent on doing a hike, but what looks like bad weather coming in, a heavy front across the whole west, sends me back after a short recon along the Bench Road. It seems doable as an alternative escape route, if this end is the worst, though, in wet conditions, forget it. And it totals thirty miles to Elk Springs, not just the three miles I did on recon. Almost all of it is in the red and yellow (bentonite) clay-sandstone alluvium, and this is precisely this same stuff which sits at the top of the Echo Park Road — from the 2000-foot displacement on the Mitten Park Fault, so, no real solution in heavy and widespread rain. However, this doesn’t seem the case — the rain is sporadic, fast-moving, and interspersed with bright sunshine and the roads are basically still dry after two days of ‘winter storm,’ so fretting about it is a waste of energy. Either I get out on Friday or I don’t and have to wait a few days. Plenty of water, fuel, and food, so that is no problem. The only locked-in point is the flight next Wednesday evening to Portland. But I’d still hate to miss the yurt-raising in Glade Park at Collin and Marisa’s this weekend! more “western terminus Yampa Bench”

posted

CLUI: Day Twenty-Two — battalion-strength

Army exercises, Wendover Air Base, Wendover, Utah, April 2010

Today, a group of large Winnebago’s towing large trailers descend around the Enola Gay hangar, spread their leveling legs, expand their living-room sides, deploy external camping chairs, and unfurl their shade awnings. In the large trailers are a range of amateur racing vehicles. Mostly stock cars with over-amped engines. A huge course is set up on the near taxi-way.

Meanwhile, at South Base, a contingent of active Army troops is engaged in a live-fire exercise, complete with fire-finding radar systems and a half-dozen porta-potties, everything obscured in form through the ripple of heat-waves coming from runway one and two and the old taxiways between here and there. In early evening, a contingent of UH-60 Blackhawks come in to land along with a handful MH-6 Little Bird Special Ops ‘choppers.

When a highly-ordered techno-social system meets a disordered system, what are the results? Is it similar to an osmotic membrane with more and less salty water on either side, the fresher water is drawn through the membrane to dilute the salty water? Is the energy-based order diluted and lessened through the contact? A combat situation is, itself, a hybrid sequence of events transitioning between order and disorder at many scales over time– with the different actors intent on maintaining an in-flow of energy in order to maintain their order. It is the ordered expression of collective techno-social energies with the goal of decreasing the order of the opponents system — whether at the single body scale, or at the scale of the wider techno-social infrastructure.

In the case of Afghanistan, the points at which the advanced ordered system (US) can apply weapons to increase the disorder of the opposing system (Taliban) are so limited to be almost point-less. The Afghani society has so minimal an ordered social infrastructure to be destroyed and the relation of individuals to the destruction of their own body-systems (in the case of the martyr), makes the conflict literally sense-less and not win-able in any classic way — where winning is the imposition of a critical level of disorder on the capabilities of the opposition to express concentrated energies that will disrupt the order of ones own system.

posted

Clui: Day Five — tangential contact

Enola Gay Hangar, Wendover Airbase, Wendover, Utah, April 2010
In the sonic realm, this part of the western desert (the spatial extent defined by precipitation at least) seems, at first, quiet. Stepping out of the car after a bruising day of fighting the wheel, ah, only the susurration of blood pumping in the ears. But, despite this initial impression, human intrusion in the western desert is never silent. The ambient pre-human sonic domain is defined by a few animals making occasional signals “I am here.” Ravens and coyotes are perhaps the noisiest, with others following in a rapidly declining decibel range. Wind is mostly, literally, in the ear of the beholder as a register of turbulent flow around the aural orifice but occasionally one is in a place where the wind makes some secondary sound (in a riparian regime, in seasonal leaves, or whistling around a certain rock formation, but these are rare and difficult to record without exceptional and expensive equipment). Otherwise, then, there is only the human incursion. This incursion is typically related to the movement of those intrusive humans through the domain as few have the desire to stop and actually hear silence. The few who volunteer or are forced to stop for a longer time are not necessarily prone to sonic disturbances, though that group, as a whole, are dominated by willing or unwilling participants in the military-industrial machine. The balance, a small remainder, are likely seeking the silence. The members of the machine make plenty of noise via everything from weapon systems testing to mining to toxic waste incineration, but access to these secretive sonic sources are for the select, not the transitory rabble.

Those engaged in field recording are left with the experience of tangential contact. That is, functioning as a stationary point, recording the arrival and departure of a nearby transport vector — trains, planes, and cars. Given the proper conditions, especially the lack of wind, these can make interesting (and startling) recordings. Trucks may be heard many miles away and render an impossibly slow Doppler shifting that is also modulated by differential density and velocity metrics of the intervening air. Planes are often more difficult as the most dramatic contact is with the low-flying fighter aircraft which will show up practically without warning and are so loud that recording is impossible. The db peak of that tangential contact pegs the meter. Before the air-to-ground missiles are launched at you, the target, and field incursions become moot.

So, what to do? Muddle along. Hit the casinos. Though I’ve been tossed out of those in the distant past for making photographs, the H4 Zoom looks suspicious, so I think it also will attract attention from security for sure. Ach.

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

(in) no time

Willie Wagtails (Rhipidura leucophrys), Minors (Manorina melanocephala) …

that entry stopped there. no time to observe and note things when constantly consuming texts and coping with the daily movements. it is highly inefficient to commute for this kind of work. research is 90% online, and moving between home and the office sucks up at least 1.5 hours a day. strange that it is able to absorb so much time when it’s just a short distance away. walking takes about 40 minutes each way, though, and waiting for the bus and the slow crawl down George Street is tedious. I find that the mind-space that I take on when in that mode is very unproductive and deadening. I observe, while hearing is constantly assaulted, occasionally some energizing encounters, but the locally dominant Asian sense of personal space I find deeply conflicting with my own. and the reflexive sensory protocols I developed through the time in the desert and mountains has been thoroughly destroyed — no stars to see, not even planets, and it is only in the 16th-floor office that its really possible to watch the weather develop albeit through heavy windows that cannot be opened and are filthy on the exterior (I cleaned the large inside pane of the window immediately over my desk, much to the amusement of several of the other grad students). optical clarity — if I’m forced to look at the world through a glass filter, it’s got to be clean!
more “(in) no time”

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”

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thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts

Concerning Particular Methodologies

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

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

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

welcome to the tech-no-mad space

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

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Jean-Marie Gustave LeClezio

WOW, my all-time favorite writer, Jean-Marie Gustave LeClezio won the Nobel Prize for Literature! Splendid! Incroyable! Very deserving! I first picked up a copy of Les Giants, The Giants, in English translation back in 1987 or so at the CU Boulder library. I was hooked. Fantastically minute and prismatic observations of everyday moments. Incisive and elemental critique of human be-ing on the planet. On one of my trips to Paris in the 1980s I attempted to make contact with him through his French publisher, Gallimard, but was not successful.

I suppose this will get more of his books into translation which is a good thing, IMHO. I think that at least seven of the thirty or so may be found in English, slightly more than that in German.

as a preface to the online Center of the Universe documentation, I use

So everything is ready: ready for the journey to Purgatory, the journey to the land of black and white… The last remaining area of imperfection seems to disappear; the perfect work of not-being, a beautiful poem, monochrome and illegible. — J-M. G. LeClezio

Le Clézio, J.-M.G., 2009. Desert, 1st U.S. ed., Boston: David R. Godine.
posted
  • place: Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany

blackbird sings

Nan’s funeral in Charlottenburg. I see a number of people that I have not seen in some time. Kathy Rae is there from Manchester, and Sandro, one of the students who came to Iceland all those years ago.

The funeral is moving, standing room only. In the room with the casket, a video tape interview with Nan running silently, along with a projection of one of her Light-water videos. Flowers, candles. Friends in black. Stories from a few folks.

After the service, Sandro mentions that he has a photograph from the Iceland trip, which he then pulls from an envelope. I am moved when I see that it is one of my postcards that I sent him after the trip. I think I sent each of the students that I had addresses for a copy, if I remember right. I immediately notice that it is on resin-coated paper, ach, but that was a time when I could use nothing else as I had only the college lab which could hardly be called a lab even. I worked with what I had. He said he would send me a high-rez scan of it. It underlines that old idea I had to gather up all the postcards that I have ever sent and put on an exhibition. What fun that would be. Especially if each of the people would attend the show.

It is very nice to let memories of Nan float up, especially her work which is essentially about Light. And her presence as a mentor, teacher, friend, her art. generosity. And the community she supported.

And memories of her Armani suit and her fondness for good cognac.

Avalon from Roxy Music plays in one interlude. and I make this small tribute — blackbird sings…

(00:10:13, stereo audio, 19.6 mb)

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

The Regime of Amplification: A Primer

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

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

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

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

KEY TERMS

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

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

Nan Hoover 1931-2008


I am shocked to hear via Raul that Nan Hoover just passed away. I had just talked to her on the telephone back in April she was just back in town after setting up her show in Salzburg, and we were going to get together after not crossing paths for some years. lung cancer and the ensuing chemo took her away in five weeks.

A condolences site is set up.

we first met through a very bizarre coincidence back in 1991 or so. MB and I were traveling in Germany and were up in Düsseldorf for a day, I don’t recall why. we were in the neighborhood of the Academy, so I thought it would be interesting to see this place where Nam June Paik (was teaching) and Joseph Beuys (had taught). the place was empty as we wandered around the halls. at some point I saw a name tag on a door that said Nan Hoover, and I recognized the name as this American video/performance artist. it was the only door with a Light shining out from under, so I knocked. Nan answered the door and I introduced myself mentioning right off that I was from Iceland and was at the Icelandic Academy teaching electronic media. she practically fell over. she and her student assistant, Paschutan Buzari had just at that moment been talking about the trip they were planning to Iceland, and that they didn’t have any direct contacts at the Academy. needless to say, a synchronous event which was a nice start to our connection. I subsequently did much of the ground logistics for the two week trip. the photo above is a group portrait of Nan (with some of her students and Icelandic friends along with MB and Loki (who was at that moment all of 5 days old!)). It was taken on the top of Perlan in Reykjavík. I hosted the student group at the Icelandic Academy where we had a nice collective happening at the end of their visit. and before that some field trips and visions of the Northern Lights among other activities. Nan and the students stayed in a couple flats that the Academy had right behind our house on Holmgardi. I arranged for her to do a screening and public talk at the Nylistasafn in Reykjavík as well. I later went to Düsseldorf a number of times to visit with her classes, as well as meeting her back in Amsterdam a few times.

re-reading the letters I was sending to Nan back then, somewhere packed away in the archive are her letters to me. her work is profoundly energized and a fundamental exploration of Light and change (the video and installation work). I would really like to get to Salzburg to see the show that she is sharing with Bill Viola. I never saw any of her live performance work. time passing. life passing.

A memory of standing in early autumn darkness in Reykjavik, behind my house, watching the Aurora Borealis with Nan and some of her students. Years later, she leaves us, and it occurs to me that through all the ways that she manifest for us, she was explicitly revealing the nature of Light as a process of living and of life. Black absorbs the energy of Light: she spent her life re-radiating that Light in a variety of splendid forms for us to be inspired by. Her vision of Light is profound and it thankfully resonates through all those who encountered her or her work. Thank you Nan for that and for our last phone call.

posted
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

ascending

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

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

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

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: Berlin, Germany

ICE

from Rod — he thinks it’s a good idea. me too, seems to be, at least (please note that this article has nothing to do with InterCity Express (ICE) trains here in Germany):

We all carry our mobile phones with names & numbers stored in its memory but nobody, other than ourselves, knows which of these numbers belong to our closest family or friends.

If we were to be involved in an accident or were taken ill, the people attending us would have our mobile phone but wouldn’t know who to call. Yes, there are hundreds of numbers stored but which one is the contact person in case of an emergency? Hence this ‘ICE’ (In Case of Emergency) Campaign

The concept of ‘ICE’ is catching on quickly. It is a method of contact during emergency situations. As cell phones are carried by the majority of the population, all you need to do is store the number of a contact person or persons who should be contacted during emergency under the name ‘ICE’ ( In Case Of Emergency).

The idea was thought up by a paramedic who found that when he went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mobile phones with patients, but they didn’t know which number to call. He therefore thought that it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name for this purpose. In an emergency situation, Emergency Service personnel and hospital Staff would be able to quickly contact the right person by simply dialing the number you have stored as ‘ICE.’

For more than one contact name simply enter ICE1, ICE2 and ICE3 etc. A great idea that will make a difference!

Let’s spread the concept of ICE by storing an ICE number in our mobile phones today!

Please forward this. It won’t take too many ‘forwards’ before everybody will know about this. It really could save your life, or put a loved one’s mind at rest.

ICE will speak for you when you are not able to!

posted
  • place: Berlin - Friedrichshain, Germany

OSPC

busy day, at home online all the time — a performance to check out with Helen Varley Jamieson as hosted by Annie Abrahams’ Breaking Solitude project. along with some stream testing with the backyard radio people for the moving forests event later this week (part of Transmediale). meeting Loki for the first time in awhile for a decent conversation. and otherwise heavy multi-tasking that characterizes a day like this — sending out to local nodes my new contact info here in Berlin, trying to figure out when to see people where, and on and on. a brief foray out, taking the long way to another grocery store, walking in increasingly long circles to check out the neighborhood. haven’t found the organic food store yet. a bakery, but no organic grocers. no Turkish shops either. this is definitely different than other neighborhoods that I’ve experienced in Berlin — it is in the former East (ever-lingering eau-de-coal-fired-furnaces in the air) — although many of the apartment blocks have been re-furbished, there is a different vibe. hope to more specifically explore that in the next weeks.

I read with interest this reaction from Malawi from Martin Lucas on the recent iDC list discussion about Nicolas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. So I asked Martin if I could permanently host the text on neoscenes:

I have been reading with interest the discussion of the ‘hundred-dollar laptop’ and the One Laptop per Child initiative as I sit in Malawi, a small landlocked Southern African nation lodged between Mozambique, Zambia, and Tanzania. According to Wikipedia, the OLPC effort has its philosophical base in the idea that children with laptops will be able to do a certain kind of thinking that isn’t possible without the computer – exploring certain areas – particularly in math and science where computer access offers a qualitatively superior learning experience. Making such machines available at low prices should allow developing countries to bridge the ‘digital divide’, and leapfrog learning. Countries that have signed on include Uruguay. India has given a definite no. Either way, the OLPC initiative is an aspect of ‘development’ even ‘IT for Development.’ How does the initiative square with the reality of a small African nation? … more

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

aapka

Dinner at Aapka with Fernanda, Mari, Mika, and Miga. Good, cheap. Afterwards we go to to look at Miga’s car which has a dry radiator. hmmm. have to fix that!

Computer still screwed up — the back-Light on the flat-screen has a bad connection and starts to short out when I start the machine up. It is an intermittent problem and is accompanied with a nice crackling sound of a bad electrical contact. Putting off the eventuality of taking the dang thing apart to check it out. Thinking that Volker will have the right tools in Köln next week. Fortunately Miga has a spare external monitor which works as a usable substitute. Just another stress on the system. It first happened the same day of the SQL disaster. faugh!

posted
  • place: Düsternbrooke, Kiel, Germany
  • author: Sarah Chung

Sarah Chung

former student Sarah lets me reprint this article she wrote recently about her creative practice:

Sarah H. Chung :: https://www.myspace.com/sarahhdot

I am an experimental multimedia artist, a student, and a teacher based in Denver, Colorado, USA. My latest artistic pursuits are a combination of various mediums including still image, video, sound, sculpture, light, and performance. Most recently I have been collaborating with another female artist, Heidi Higginbottom, to choreograph audio/visual performances using found objects, homemade instruments, contact microphones, and film loops. We make homemade contact microphones out of easily attainable and affordable materials and use them to amplify the sound of the movement of objects. We have used objects ranging from dishware, tile, typewriters, music boxes, sewing machines, thumb pianos, toys, water, or any curious object we can get our hands on. Our intentions are not to make melodic pieces of “music,” but to isolate and arrange pure commonplace sounds that would normally be easily lost in the proceedings of everyday life. While these objects may be ordinary, they refer to a vast web of associations and marked memories. By arranging them, we create a new resonance in the relationships the objects and symbols have with one another. These relationships are meant to be memory cues that can be triggered by sensory experience. We are in the process of experimenting with different technologies and digital software to incorporating projections, audio delay, editing and looping.

As a studio art major I was largely focused on traditional forms of art such as painting, drawing, and photography. It was about six years ago that I began to pay more attention to the intricate and beguiling aspects of the digital art culture. I was introduced to it from digital art courses being taught by visiting professor, John Hopkins, who is a working artist and has taught and traveled internationally. Projects included collecting and arranging self-generated media and media filtered from outside sources. These included field recordings, videos, still images, and lines of text. I had not dealt with this kind of medium prior to this, so I approached it the same as I would painting and 35mm photography. While the navigation of new software in a limited time span was challenging, the results of the projects left me very intrigued and curious about digital culture. I believe that the success of these projects were due to the non-linear process of collecting media without a finished product as motivation. Filtering media (books, internet, video, music, sound clips, etc.) provides an intuitive process for choosing content. It becomes a dialogue that interacts with an individuals sensibilities and social views. Whether I am drawn to content or pure aesthetic, some aspect of the media strikes me, and I collect it.

With human interaction, technology can be used as a tool to express emotion and the individualized perspectives of human experience. Technology brings with it an efficiency that adds new time-lines within our culture. Ubiquitous media screens flash loaded images and sounds that are intended to influence feelings and opinions about products, services, and perspectives in government. These messages compete with each other and have conditioned us to receive information at an exponentially increasing rate. In a society saturated with advertising, I feel a responsibility to express and tap into more emotive, internalized feelings and memories, and to offer a situation for slowing down. This desire is what caused me to seek out the tools and skills that could connect me with the vast and accessible network I was experiencing.

I believe it is of utmost importance for individuals to be informed about technologies so that they may exercise basic democratic principles. I had been intimidated by technology before, but I felt that placing myself outside of the existence of it is like surrendering my own rights. Technology is propelled by human curiosity, but is often used as a system of control. History is constantly redefined based on documentation. Dominant historical theories are based on those with the power to document and expose others to their material. It is crucial to actively participate in the documentation process of our own history in process.

Links: (check them out!!)
https://www.neoscenes.net
https://home.earthlink.net/~erinys/contactmic.html
https://www.pierrebastien.com/
https://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/
https://www.mutek.org/
https://www.haamu.com/launau
https://www.colleenplays.org/
https://www.skoltzkolgen.com/

posted
  • place: Brooklyn, New York

urban recall

overnight at Eric and Sylvia’s (aka Asteria) place

in Brooklyn after that nice share.dj evening at reboot in the City.

meet Trebor for lunch and coffee in Park Slope. hanging in a coffee house, cyber cafe. where hardly anyone is talking. this is the social venue of the time. wouldn’t have been this way five years, ten, twenty years ago. with Bob Marley playing non-stop on the sound system. and photographic portraits of old gypsy women on the walls. the guy across from me, in the cluster of couches full of typers gets up and leaves, leaving an ipod or iphone behind. a gal next to him in an overstuffed smoking chair gets up and runs after him. no one else looks up at the ripple fluttering of off energy. I smile at her when she returns to her seat and her computer. no more contact.

and the urban vibrato in the space from ankle to nose. along with hard pavement. I walked two miles from Eric’s down to Trebor’s. it always surprises me, the condition of the general infrastructure of the city. would it be better if there wasn’t a war going on?

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

grandaddy

Helping Uncle Al get his image archive in order and safely backed-up. Seeing histories of people. Many of them gone. They were once lively teens, twenty-somethings, young parents, in the late 1930’s and 40’s. Wondering how it was that he was using German (Agfa) films well into the 1940’s even during the war. Here’s gran-daddy, John Malcolm Mackenzie, at the Somerville house in 1938. The particular quality of the hand-developed film with very high silver content gives the images a special luminosity even in the digital scanned versions. Contact printing these negatives on Azo #1 paper would be quite nice. But Kodak no longer manufactures that paper, or anything else, for that matter. Time passes.

posted
  • place: White Mountains, California

high

attenuated transitions, on the same route taken two months previous almost to the day. across the Central Valley, and the ascent of the Sierras. not too crowded for a Saturday around peak season. so much drier than two months ago. most creeks in Yosemite are dry washes. fill the 10 gallon bladder with water from the high-pressure spigot at the east end of the Tioga grade. fill the water bottles and the 2.5 gallon tank as well. and drink a good fill. cold, damn good water. courtesy the Donner Electric Company. there are two spigots, another man is filling a large bladder in the back of his SUV. when I’m done, a pickup pulls up, the guy mouthing “get outta the way!” to me as I get into the cab of my truck. contorting my mouth into a variety of shapes, without using any particular language or vocabulary, I then smile and slowly pull away, waving. on down the road, south on 395 past Mono Lake, being passed by cars moving at excess of 80 mph most of the time. going backwards whilst going forward. one sedan passes. I vaguely notice the occupants. fifteen minutes later a tableau reveals itself. several cars parked on either side of the road, and that same sedan flipped over in the median, a group of people milling around. the D200 records several shots as I pass, transcendent. to Bishop. from Bishop one heads a bit south then east into the White Mountains on a very steep and twisted paved road which ends up in the Deep Springs Valley passing the mythological Deep Springs College. about half-way to the College is the turn-off into the Bristlecone Pine Wilderness area. a 40-mile trek on a bad dirt road. to the locked gate. tooling along, following the principle that wash-board surfaces are best negotiated as such a speed where the tires only have contact with the wave peaks, not the troughs, you get a smooth ride. while filed at the back of mind, another maxim taught/learned during the School of Mines summer field camp — “driving on a dirt road is like driving on ball bearings.” suddenly that mushy feeling with handling. hmmm. slow down. damn. a flat. the fourth this summer. good thing yesterday I had replaced the previous spare which had a 3-inch slash from an unknown source. the current flat tire has a similar gash. changing it as fast as possible, damnation, get covered with the fine pale beige dust. twiLight somewhere shortly off, and another 25 miles to go before getting to the locked-gate/trailhead. I had to think hard whether to continue without a spare or turn around and get back to paved life. with a uncertain heart, I went ahead, trundling along at no more than 5 mph. well, at least it gives a nice view of the passing scenery. consequently, I didn’t get to the gate until well after sunset. there were a couple other cars. there was a hard breeze blowing though with the air around 4% relative humidity, it didn’t feel as cold as it actually was, but it was plunging fast. the daily fluctuation can easily be 40 degrees F (30 C). ground cloth (a heavy black plastic sheet), three back-packing sleeping pads, the wool poncho from Colombia, bivouac sack, down sleeping bag, sheet sack, pillow, down vest, and fleece jacket. after a quick dinner of re-heated pasta from the night before, I crawl in, leaving a small slit to watch the stars through. only just warm enough. over-tired from the drive and the altitude, stunned awake by the stellar intensity, hardly sleep, catching a few scattered Perseids. I’ve not seen stars like this in years. this particular location, aside from the modest amount of air pollution from the rest of California to the west, is as dark as can be found in the lower 48 states. that and being up at high altitude. the stars were not positioned as in a dome of sky. rather, they appeared without perspective, nor were they simply pasted, flat on a black background. they appeared full and with depth and an obvious shading of dark matter obscuring the center of the Milky Way. enough overall Light to see easily. I had the feeling of plunging forward into them, clearly manifest as a space, a cosmos that I was floating into, chill wind flushing any illusions of being on a planet. flying despite the gravity of the chunk of rock pressing against my back.

posted
  • place: Sydney, NSW, Australia

salvage

hmmm, combinations of local circumstances impede encounters. structural deficiencies route possible crossings into different spaces. turtle-like, looking out onto a complex and unknown landscape and socio-cultural milieu.

find any openings for contact, sussing-out, phishing, checking in, checking out. finding where there is a break in the construct, gaps. small TAZ’s crouched and ready. intervene, connect.

and on another note entirely. sadly, transcendentally. hearing on the underside of the planet. or the reverse top. as shadows point to Antarctica. another giant come to an end in this world. how to expect that another world is? or that there is some way of standing in both for more than a while.

So it goes. — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five style=

posted
  • place: en route Helsinki, Finland - Edmonton - Calgary, Canada - San Francisco, California

fading away

Europe fading into its own spring, much warmer than normal, so that it wasn’t such a stretch for the body to cope with along the way. up well before dawn, Alex takes the same taxi to the airport. we meet some other retreating Pixelachers at the cafe in the departures lounge. then it’s off to London for the first of four flights and four security checks — five airports later, Nancy and Steve meet me at SFO. always the luxury of familiar faces at the airport.

final calculations, despite the incredible synergy of this trip, it ends up being fiscally unsustainable. gotta shift gears. move to another model. the dynamic of encounter does not need to change, except in some surficial forms, but the social venue of encounter has to shift radically. putting out such immense quantities of life-energy in this engagement process. saying it over and over in mind, the deep disappointment after spending life-time in the face-to-face and having that not be sustainable. at all. seems like the different Others engaged with over the course of the trip have a viable position in the social system, have found that sustainability. where is the missing element in the equation? nothing in life is guaranteed, but examining the momentary conditions that predominated, there was an essential element of stability which is missing in the current personal modus. making contacts, having discussions about situations, conditions, systems, solutions, and most importantly, ways of seeing the world, and ways of action and remembering the reasons for be-ing. but the lack of sustainability remains the upper-most issue to be solved soon. converting attentions into cash.

posted
  • place: Helsinki, FInland

In The Presence of Networks: A Meditation on the Architectures of Participation

ED: This essay was included in the Pixelache07 publication download a full pdf of that. (2.1 mb)

Architectures of Participation is a compelling phrase that attempts literally to frame a deeper fundamental of human existence. This text is a preliminary meditation on that existence and aspects of its profound presence.

On the immediate surface, the phrase suggests the grandiose, the monumental, and the static and rigid hegemony of brick-and-mortar — a suggestion that appears to contravene the deeply dynamic nature of the broader continuum of human relation. This continuum, generated in part through participatory actions, is a far more fundamental space that circumscribes much of our passing presence in this world. We will have to dig deep to find the foundations.

Participation is one reductive descriptor that applies to the infinite range of personal energies expressed and shared during our lived be-ing. Participation is a condition that does not leave our lives until we leave our lives. Participation starts when life starts with the participatory synergy of reproduction. This prototypical participatory act is phenomenal in that the energies of two human beings combine to create the presence of a third human being. Participation is the root of life. Participation follows life in the synergies of parent with child, friend with friend, partner with partner, colleague with colleague, stranger with stranger. We participate in life, in living, every moment.

more “In The Presence of Networks: A Meditation on the Architectures of Participation”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

vholoce

another Furtherfield review:

All phenomenon have the potential of being converted into infinite data-streams which become an archive of knowledge through which it is possible to organize social behavior.

Vholoce is one project in a long line of projects which seeks to creatively engage the ubiquitous data-streams that are flooding our virtual world. The rising flood of data is useless without sensible display. Visual (and sonic) display of digital data is a fundamental contemporary issue. But what is sensible display? Using a data stream as a basically random source for visual display is one way to play with the stream. The syntax of visual display (possibly) becomes the site for expression by the creative producer. The data-stream source, the method of (and reason for) display, and the overall creative process need to be interrogated in order to find the basis for type of digital engagement.
more “vholoce”