field work
notes prior to Memory Seminar with Andrew Hoskins
The concept of memory is related to my own work and practice — as an artist, part of my work does relate to the creation and preservation of my personal archive. Also, memory is a feature of collective Techno-Social Systems as a mapping of embodied participation in that system over time. It is also a concept to consider in the wider perspective of my work which examines human presence, encounter with the Other, collective social systems and their impact on the individual and finally, creative action.
Memory is the trace of energies from the surrounding situation that literally impress (on) the embodied self. Making the radical assumption framed by the words of physicist David Bohm, that
… there is a universal flux that cannot be defined explicitly but which can be known only implicitly, as indicated by the explicitly definable forms and shapes, some stable and some unstable, that can be abstracted from the universal flux.
Phenomenal events and configurations of these energies pass through the body (as simply another manifestation of this flux), leaving altered states of be-ing. These embodied traces persist in time, but as with all life and being, are transitory. They exist as change, and are often experienced as a fundamental awareness of difference — “I originally felt like that, but now I feel like this, having experienced this event.”
External memory storage situations via digital technological mediation are, by nature, material, reductive, and transitory. They are subject to decay and loss as with any other external (and internal) means.
Three significant issues arise in the process of externalized memory storage. The first is in the process of creating the artifact. As with any pre-digital artifact, making a “memory” artifact requires that the Self (or someone) step out of living and mediate their presence in the operation of the device that creates the artifact. This stepping out applies not only to the making of the artifact but also to the (onerous) process of archiving. This process radically changes the experience of a life-trajectory by an individual. And, as suggested by Quantum ideas, the observer affects that which is observed, the act of making memory artifacts actually affects the scenario that is being recorded.
A second major issue occurs when any of these processes are taken over by extensions of the Techno-Social System, they subject the Self to a loss of autonomy. (i.e., cloud computing as one example of a centralized architecture that removes the trace of the digital artifact wholly out of the purview of the individual (creator, participant).) The levels of loss of autonomy exist on a sliding scale — loss occurs whenever the individual is not in control of the mediatory storage (its provenance, creation, organization, archiving, sustenance, distribution, demise, destruction). Any externalization falls under this regime.
The third issue lies in the maintenance of archive. As a fundamentally ordered system (timely retrieval is critical for a functioning archive), the archive requires an essentially constant energy influx to maintain that order. That energy source is, at base, the human being. How much personal energy will humans participating in a Techno-social system be willing to dispense of or provide/support in order to maintain an ever-growing energy burden of either a collective or individual archive? Is this why the Library of Alexandria burned?
pre-amped
Amplification is a primary function of molecular cascades (selective reduction of environmental cues—which are essentially electromagnetic energy impinging on sensory receptors). The process requires that an organism has a consistent surplus of energy to provide the necessary amplification of signal. Often amplification factors are in excess of 1000x in the case of optic nerve stimulation by a single photon and the subsequent processes unleashed in the nerve cell. An organism needs consistently and readily available energy source(s) to improve the possibility of survival-to-reproduction. But why does reproduction play such a big role in a discrete/single organism’s existence?—to simply continue life—or is life a continuum within which all organisms are connected by nature?
It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of ‘equilibrium’ that an organism appears so enigmatic… What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive.
Schrödinger, Erwin. What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
demise
house empties steadily of evidences of former existence, leaving echoing rooms and sighs behind. tired of family things, baggage, power struggles, gender clashes, legal crap, bogus relations and expressions. completely. will be glad to be done with all this noise and leave it behind. respect is something I now realize I should never expect within the slowly decaying framework of this human grouping. simply because it never was present in the constellation of relationships that was the arbitrary biological unit termed “family” in this case. with religion composed primarily of Word disconnected from perceptible Action, and a pointless abyss in application between outward appearance (church every Sunday), and actual outcomes that carried weight (praxis-based). there were enough off-balances represented within individuals to finally disperse it. good riddance. fiercely.
Partial Description of the World
I don’t normally post long passages of other writers, but Alan (Sondheim) posted this to nettime today: it penetrated the fog of hypo-texts that floods a typical day in front of screen-life.
The power grid provides 60 Hz here at approximately 115-117 volts; this is maintained by dynamos driven by steam or coal or oil or hydro held together in a malleable grid. The grid enters the city, where electricity is parceled out through substations to cables continuously maintained and repaired. Here, the cables are below ground. They drive my Japanese Zaurus PDA which utilizes an entire linux operating system on it. The Zaurus connects to the Internet through a wireless card that most often connects to my Linksys router, which is connected both to the power grid and the DSL modem by a cat cable. The DSL is operated by Verizon with its own grid at least nation-wide and continuously-maintained. The DSL of course connects more or less directly to the Internet, which is dependent upon an enormous number of protocol suites for its operation, the most prominent probably TCP/IP. The addresses of the Internet, through which I reach my goal of NOAA weather radar, are maintained by ICANN and other organizations. These organization are run by any number of people, who employ the Net, fax, telephone, and standard mail, to communicate world-wide. more “Partial Description of the World”
recovery
Francis Bacon doesn’t seem to be so interesting — highly over-rated. though he did recognize that
Knowledge is power — Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est
but anyway, he doesn’t provide any liberate witticisms on recovery. recovery is a slow process. obviously. to regain a state of order after a chaotic intervention into the body-system assumes a significant input of energy back into the system. seeking order. recovery is seeking order. but the pathway never seems so clear. there are many possible ways. the ingestion of certain substances is necessary, but which ones in which order and what quantity when. rest mandatory, but when does rest and horizontality begin to hinder regaining the activity of life which is primarily vertical? exercise, the operation of the physical meat space is key, though it too can take legion permutations depending on life-philosophy. body-awareness is heightened, to the excruciating boredom of those folks who have to listen to mumbled ruminations about body processes and deviations that are often, as they say, “more information than I needed to know.” the grail of order, bringing perfect form back to the meat-space is always set to fail merely by the intervention of the same time factor that is necessary for recovery to begin with. time brings decay and aging. so, recovery will always be an accession to a lesser goal or state than one would care to accept. diminished capacity. the question becomes, what to let go of and what to fight for…
mushrooms
sonorous night of outside vodka partiers and raucous snoring. sharing simple spaces with others. back in a situation where 99 words in 100 are incomprehensible. so, the exhausting state of contextualizing everything, with little-to-no results. recalls first visits in Iceland and Finland. where now comfortable meaning is heard in those places, here is that discomfort. especially in unstable living and logistic situations.
a hike to the highest dune where there is a huge sundial covered in runes, installed in 1991. the top granite pedestal, the solar pointer, is broken off and lies smashed across the circle of granite blocks that forms the face of the dial on the ground — from a storm in 1996. there are pathways everywhere, some adding to the sense of un-natural erosion and human presence. no trees are left to lie in the woods if they fall by storm or disease, so the natural infrastructure, for example, soil development, is a bit hampered, though the whole of the island is technically a National Park. I park myself on a variety of locations to soak up the ambiance, one place, sitting half-way out on a breakwater pier (to record the odd sound of waves skimming the side of the concrete). an elderly gentleman wanders up, looking as much like the images of an old Karl Marx as is possible, with a bit of white-haired Fidel Castro mixed in. he is with his daughter, who stays behind at the shore. they are there for memory, that is clear. bodies mapping old pathways and places from youth. there they were, a younger man with his daughter, a child, playing on this same beach, the trees different, the world hosting a different set of human empires, principalities, and powers. he comes to me, and asks something in Russian to which I reply in English that I don’t speak Russian, he then asks in German if I speak German, so I reply in German him that I am an American artist, he reacts with interested surprise, but speaks no English, so, smiling, walks to the far end of the breakwater to stand for a bit. his daughter finally joins him and together they chat with the lone fisherman who seems to be without much luck. the couple, young and old, walk slowly back to the beach, I tip my hat to him as he approaches, he salutes me, and pats my shoulder as he shuffles past. human connection.
mushrooms are the focus of much of the day. Alvydas has gathered several bags full, so we spend a couple hours cleaning them — peeling the top skin off and making sure there are no decaying parts.
I make a presentation for the students late in the evening that is followed by some difficult questioning provoked by my fragmentary and discontinuous comments about energy and art, and the live remix that I effect as an opening sample of my work on the projector.
this is followed by platefuls of the mushrooms with potatoes that have been carefully boiled and spiced. mmmMMMMmmmmm.
decay
dinner with Sara & Gulleik last night, always a power jolt of energy sharing stories. and now faced with the dilemma on how to circumlocute the Amurikan situation. what exactly IS going on there. inside and outside impressions. as usual, my politic is anecdotal, but the changes that have been implemented since September 11, 2001 are extreme, subtle, and hidden from view. the book that Rick passed on to me, the “Clash of Civilizations” details the continued demise of the Imperial power of the West, and the rise of Muslim political power and Sino-centrism. I believe this trend has been happening for years. predating Anthony’s pronouncement as we were walking onto 5th Avenue in NYC from the Parsons photo lab one afternoon — that the primary characteristic of this age in the West is decay. that profound and concise observation marked the beginning of a long friendship that has explored the world and the energies behind the surface of the world.
shop-rite on
Flying times. Didgeridoo player at Whole Foods, in the aromatherapy aisle. Reminds me of the pseudo-bluegrass band playing at the Pharmacy in the Newton, New Jersey ShopRite. Something about Nero and Rome burning. Here in Boulder, however, it’s different. Food samples being offered everywhere, so people come to the store to get a meal. Word gets around. Even Boulder can’t insulate itself by the diffident cloak of liberal ‘caring’. Society out of touch. Schisms, chasms opening wide. John Brunner’s book The Sheep Look Up crosses my path again in Bordesholm, after 25 years. And it is more accurate, with the exception of missing the cyber-developments (those the Neuromancer caught), in its prognostications of a world ruled and consequently destroyed by technocrats and technological implementations in the service of consumers and consuming. So it goes. A traveler’s notes might well continue here in this immobile condition. As the social matrix around is foreign, and re-mark-able. And in the complex sliding process of multi-phased decay and degeneration. I had forgotten that much of the action in Brunner’s book takes place in Colorado, for whatever reasons. Ending with Denver under martial law, and the dominoes toppling.
Brunner, John. The Sheep Look Up. 1st BenBella Books ed. Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2003.
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. Ace trade ed. Ace Science Fiction. New York, NY: Ace Books, 2000.
education
new bike, the Nashbar 5000 now 15 or so years old. still running, in need of some new parts, though, so I will contribute it to some charity. when in Amurika, upgrade. to what end? newness (an energized statement against entropic decay). but it requires an energy input. constantly. that’s what makes gold so desirable, that it requires almost no input over time to retain its luster. you only have to get it.
Education is a process that necessarily entails an interpersonal (not merely interactive) relationship between people — student and teacher (and student and student) that aims at individual and collective self-knowledge. (Whenever people recall their educational experiences they tend to remember, above all, not courses or subjects or the information imparted but people, people who changed their minds or their lives, people who made a difference in their developing sense of themselves. It is a sign of our current confusion about education that we must be reminded of this obvious fact: that the relationship between people is central to the educational experience.) Education is a process of becoming for all parties, based upon mutual recognition and validation and centering upon the formation and evolution of identity. The actual content of the educational experience is defined by this relationship between people and the chief determinant of quality education is the establishment and enrichment of this relationship. — David F. Noble
post-Imperiality
over and out. there from Sredniy Prospekt 25, near the Metro Vasilevstrovskaya, on Vasilyevsky Island not far from the central campus of St. Petersburg University. the last evening of the lecture. walking around the city this morning, the KunstCamera of Peter the Great. what an individual he was. doing everything, insatiable appetite for life. building material monuments to Empire. now it is post-empire. infrastructure only just barely maintaining the massive and ubiquitous monuments, streets, palaces, museums, and cathedrals. what comes after Empire? is that decay the inevitable result when the inflow of energy sources dries up, when command and control weakens, when chaos descends bit by bit?
notes on creativity
most of the texts that I have been absorbing in the last weeks deal with creativity as a discontinuous (non-cyclic) and anomalous event rising above the normal “level” of daily life. this view is an obvious artifact of materialist thinking that treats life as a linear (singular) trajectory and that the expressions of that living can be wholly reduced linguistically to various statements and formulations. accepting that this view IS true within its own limited framework (the history of rational thinking), a critique would have to deconstruct the whole facade of Western philosophy in order to make a substantive attack on the position. this writer is neither qualified nor interested in making such a frontal attack which would simply be tossed aside in the dumpster of academic discourse. instead, understanding that to even name a philosophy or a philosopher that stands supporting that edifice would only give power to a system that I believe is fundamentally flawed, I have chosen to proceed intuitively, and perhaps poetically, making enormous and possibly scandalous generalizations, leaving the normative conventions of the English language behind, and simply dive into thoughts that are reflecting through waters muddied by 42 years of thrashing around in a world that seems more intense and striking everyday. by this methodology, combined with a desire that these texts be only the opening for a dialogue with the Other who might come on it, here in the sea of hyperspace, I will begin. more “notes on creativity”
temporal remains
flash fire, morose carving up of temporal remains. moving and moving. Helsinki for some hours on Saturday, enough to have breakfast at Fazer with Sanna, then drop by Tapio’s place to leave some material offal. then back to the airport to head to Copenhagen, landing a kilometer from the Oresund Bridge that threatens to bind Denmark and southern Sweden in (un)holy matrimony. faced the sad fact of the total sum of money that I have spent carting around about 3 cubic meters of belongings since 1989. first from Colorado to the East Coast, then by boat to Iceland, then, five years later, shipping it back to NYC with almost the same stuff, putting it in storage in Newton, New Jersey for five years (at U$D40/month), and now, finally (?!?) driving it all back to Prescott, Arizona to reposition it there to cook in the desert heat. basically don’t even know what is in the boxes, but with the sum total of the money invested in it, damn well ought to be valuable! but likely not. just stuff. weight, mass, to be acted upon by gravity and the entropic effects of time. the storage unit in Jersey is marginally exposed to rain water, and combined with the humid and hot summer climate, I have the feeling that everything is at least partly consumed with some form of microbial critter. decay, rotting stink.
but anyway, Loki and I take a visit to the cockpit of the B757-200 for some time. wow! the pilot is quite friendly for my moderately intelligent questions. the view is intense, a strange feeling of vertigo, but not vertigo, realizing that to be in the front of the plane has something to do with whether the thing will stay up in the air. feeling the power of the outsides, as we sail over Goose Bay. ain’t see no geese up here! Light snow on the ground, in patches, but nothing serious, it’s warm in Gander. 20C the pilot says. while NYC is only about 13C. stormy on the whole East Coast, I am hoping this doesn’t mean anything serious about the landing situation.
April Fools
I missed some days of entries for the usual reasons — to busy to get to the machine, although I was able to upload the first travel log pages down at the Slade Media Lab. And right after that, met with Susan Collins, the Head of the Slade’s Electronic Media program. We had a few rounds up in the Housman Room where the bartender, Eladio, is known for his generosity — whatever one buys ends up costing only 4 pounds sterling. A bargain, more or less, depending on what you decide to stock up on, a coupla’ pints o’stout, and a few bags of crisps, a fruit bowl, Snickers, whatever…
more “April Fools”