glitchworks
The Long Night of Radio Art
At the vilma offices thanks to Gediminas and Nomeda — for hosting the stream I’m sending to Steve of art@radio in Baltimore who has an elaborate studio set-up for the live streaming he’ll be doing from there to The Long Night of Radio Art that is part of the Reinventing Radio project of KunstRadio. the whole project will be broadcast on FM, shortwave, a special 5.1 digital satellite transmission, and online. (Taking a breath). Yeah, live online. Meet August on the IRC channel broadcasting from Santa Barbara.
Baltimore, USA :: jamming radiophonic space :: 19:30 – 06:00 Eastern Standard Time
“jamming radiophonic space,” modulates the interplay of radio, Internet, wireless transmission, an private space.
This experientially diverse and geographically scattered group will contribute to “jamming radiophonic space” through decentralized, networked, and collaborative strategies of production and distribution. Streaming feeds from microphones places in and around artists’ workspaces will be gathered along with ambient sound called in via wireless and landline phones; requests have already gone out over electronic list-serves for individuals to call in and point their live phones for 10 or 15 minutes towards sounds emblematic of their time and place.
These sonic interruptions will then be mixed and processed into a stream of “hot media” by artists present in the Baltimore studio space using baby monitors, short-wave radios, software, and other improvised sound tools. The stream will then be made available world-wide to streaming clients via wired and wireless data connections.
Artists:
Chris Basile, Goeff Bell, Steve Bradley, Phaye Poliakoff-Chen, Chad Eby, John Hopkins (Vilnius, LT), Brendan Howell, John Hudak, Jacob Kirkegaard, Tim Nohe, Joe Reinsel, Jodi Rose, Bill Shewbridge, Nicole Shiflet, John Sturgeon, and others …
to Björn Bjarnason
12 August 1995
To the Honorable Björn Bjarnason, Minister of Education and Culture
As I have noted that you have put up some home pages asking for input regarding education in Iceland, I am transmitting this formal letter to you via email. (I apologize for not writing in Icelandic, but I am not very good at it even though I have lived in Iceland for five years…)
I am writing this letter to urge your continued support of the Icelandic Academy of Art.
Following I will present some personal opinions concerning the future of the Academy as well as some concrete suggestions and proposals. These considerations are based in my experience in teaching at MHÍ for the past five years as well as numerous guest-teaching positions at other Universities and Academies in Scandinavia and the US. Currently I am serving as Chair of the US-Iceland Fulbright Educational Commission (until September 1995) and as (Founding) Director of the Electronic Media and Photography program at MHÍ. My opinions are not necessarily those of either MHÍ or the Fulbright Board.
I believe Iceland is at a crossroads where the choices, opportunities, and outcomes will be largely determined by how the issue of a national educational policy is developed. As the post of Minister of Education and Culture determines this policy, I believe it to be the most critical cabinet posting in the entire government.
It is important to the future of Iceland that attention be directed to the building-up of a competitive and well-considered program of education in the arts. The recent confirmation of intent as expressed by the Althingi and the government in support of the official formation of the Icelandic Academy must be followed up by concrete action concerning the financial, physical, and ideological future of the institution.
more “to Björn Bjarnason”
the feral grin
smartphones: images, selfies, fazebuch, instaham: the profusion of masks that appear on social media screens illustrate how much humanity has been stripped from the reductive process of the portrait and the self-portrait.
Frozen grins: the perfectly engineered white teeth of middle class prosperity. Forced from the gullet of consumption. Masks all, covering the psycho-spiritual emptiness of those same middle class lives.
HD size list:
Size matters…
1.3 Tb marfa
1.3 Tb myrtle
1.3 Tb molar
1.3 Tb maximum
930 moog
930 maltese
930 maddog
930 malraux
930 matanuska
930 mandalay
700 mambo
700 methuselah
700 modesty
700 mockery
700 mercy
700 moral
700 marxist
466 maniac
466 muftie
466 marble
466 morpheus
466 mortal G4 Tower
466 mutant G4 Tower
297 maxwell G4 Tower
279 mixture
233 neoscenes_6 K
233 neoscenes_5 K
233 neoscene4_4 K
152 neoscenes_3 fucked K
152 neoscenes_2 fucked K
114 neoscenes_1 K
80 marvin G4 PB
80 marvin49 G4 Pb
20 TiBook PB
addressing technology
Regarding the Ecosa Institute‘s curriculum re-generation (this note is a draft sketch to be sent to the rest of the dev group. Contextualized, it addresses a program that has not, historically, substantively engaged the communicative technologies and the potentials for social engagement that are currently available — but it does not cover the whole of the issue, by any means!):
I’d like to insert more nuance into the technology (digital or not) discussion that we’ve been engaging in off-and-on over the course of the last half-year. I am somewhat concerned with the question of wider relevance of the program in this regard as I compare it with other creative design situations I’ve observed or participated in over the years.
To begin with, I’d like to propose a model of technology that is more of a sliding scale rather than an ‘on-off’ binary of opposites: somewhere between proto-Luddite and techno-utopian positions. Technology can be imagined as a ‘human-constructed’ or ‘human-formed’ means of directing the pervasive energy flows that we are part of/immersed within. Precisely because of this potential to redistribute tangible power, technology sits squarely in the space of the politic, the space of the personal, and the space of the collective. Altering the flows through any ‘making’ process is just that, regardless of the technology employed. Different technologies sit on different locations on the sliding scale based on how, particularly, they affect the ‘ambient’ energy flows of the infinite surround.
Along the sliding scale, there are, for example, profound shifts in the balance between the personal and the social. The issue of personal autonomy is seen as a crucial metric. This autonomy is a measure of control that the individual exerts directly on their existence in the world. What we face in our contemporary techno-social system is a situation where the technologies and protocols are largely not self-determined or determined by a localized community. Autonomy is thus prone to devolve to a greater degree of social dependence: depending on a technology and, more critically, how a technology is understood and used. This is a crucial issue that directly affects an empowered outcome from any process that questions the status quo (of global human-dominated ecosystems).
Several interconnected points: more “addressing technology”
more on the archive
A bit overwhelming, faced with thousands of images and texts in analog form. How to go about it, especially as there is no possibility of waving hands and all get transformed to digital gems. Dross versus age, time, and energy. And the solitary process of culling, ordering, and such. The application of a system upon that which has no system, or has an unusable system for the future. More order where there is less, more simplicity where chaos has lent an indeterminate complexity. And many holes in knowing what is what. The flesh-and-blood memory storage devices have dissolved in flame. So those faces from 60, 70, 80 years ago are now unknown by name, though the far-ago visages are here re-membered in form.
Only so much life-time/life-energy is available for these tasks, this remembering. Time spent on looking backwards is time not spent in the moment looking around and participating in the immediacy of creative action. But an inertia is building to return to works on paper, in large format.
memory and the digital: re-membering
No surprises here. Schema of reliance does not include scenario of catastrophic failure of external memory storage system, etc.
Reliance on digital devices, and the trust we place in them, can resemble a human relationship. The feelings are established in the same way—through experience. Repeated experience with a reliable individual builds a ‘schema’ or association for that individual in our memory, telling us that this person can be depended on. If a digital device is continually reliable then we will build that into our schema of that device.
Dr Kathryn Mills, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London
…
Remembering, it seems, is a double-edged sword. Research in humans and animals points to the pivotal role of retrieval in shaping and stabilizing memories. However, the remembering process also induces forgetting of other memories that hinder the retrieval of the memory that we seek. It has been hypothesized that this surprising dark side of remembering is caused by an inhibitory control mechanism that suppresses competing memories and causes forgetting; this putative process is adaptive because it limits current and future distraction from competitors. However, no study has ever directly observed memories as they are suppressed by this hypothesized inhibitory control mechanism. Behavioral methods are, by their nature, blind to the internal processes unfolding during retrieval, and neuroscience has lacked methods capable of isolating neural activity associated with individual memories. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we tested for the existence of the hypothesized adaptive forgetting process by developing a template-based pattern-tracking approach that quantifies the neural activation state of single memory traces. Thus, we tracked the fate of behaviorally invisible traces, providing a window into the suppression process thought to underlie adaptive forgetting in the human brain.
Wimber, M. et al., 2015. Retrieval induces adaptive forgetting of competing memories via cortical pattern suppression. Nature Neuroscience, 18(4), pp.582–589.
Full dissertation text: The Regime of Amplification
Well, I guess it’s about time to put the PhD dissertation text out there in .pdf form, so, here it is (PDF download):
The Regime of Amplification
Have at it, be polite, no grabbing, pushing, or shoving. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate. If you can prove that you’ve read it back to front, I’ll buy you a bottle of Herradura Añejo Tequila*, as long as we can split it!
*this is my hard liquor drink of choice since 1980 when it was hard to find even in the US southwest — cherished bottles imported into Iceland (bought in NYC at NY Liquors on Canal Street, the only place in NYC that carried it!) would last up to six months, like a fine Scottish whiskey, small glasses for sipping — none of that brutish slugging down shots or making margaritas with this fine distillate.
The Energy of Archive: Re-membering the Cloud
[this paper was presented at the Balance/UnBalance Conference at Arizona State University in March where I also joined a panel with Mél Hogan, et al.]
We are living in a time where the wholesale storage of information exerts a dominant influence across the entire social system. The connection between this archive and both the stability and sustainability of the social system is direct. Few people are cognizant that it takes real(!) energy to drive “Big Data,” nor are they aware that such wide-scaled archiving (in “The Cloud”) directly affects the wider global environment.
This paper reflects on the fundamental energy (thermodynamic) conditions that apply to any ordered system. Order, as a temporal state — whether arising autopoetically or whether created intentionally within a wider structured system — functions as an information transfer or communication system and always requires an influx of energy to be maintained. The crucial issue embedded at the root of any archive relates directly to this necessity. Where does that energy come from, how is it secured, and what is the cost? As a near-ubiquitous feature of any social structure, the archive — as an ordered expression of information — is one such system. As there are apparently no violations of the Laws of Thermodynamics in the observed universe, is the fate of the archive the same as that of the cosmos: a slow heat-death? Obliquely invoking an interpretation of living (or general) systems theory, it is possible to 1) demarcate the trajectory of the archive (as (social) memory); 2) examine in the widest conceptual sense the cost of information storage and reproduction; and 3) predict the path that individual and collective knowledge takes into the future.
I will briefly introduce systems theory, as well as some principles of thermodynamics that will, as models, undergird the discussion. Relating energy, order, and information, I will tie these conceptions into the actuality of the contemporary archive by exploring the question: What does it mean to have a sustainable archive? As a creative media arts practitioner and, as a consequence, an analog and digital archivist, I will include in the discussion pertinent fragments of personal narrative that arise from that lived praxis.
Keywords: archive, thermodynamics, entropy, energy, information, systems, code, analog, digital, media arts, sustainability
High tech peace will need a new kind of humanism
Ours is a confusing time. In the developed world we have enjoyed affluence for long enough to have a hard time appreciating it. We especially love our gadgets, where we can still find novelty – but we also have strong evidence that we would be peering over the edge of a precipice if we opened our eyes more often.
It pains me to intone the familiar list of contemporary perils: Climate change first of all; population and depopulation spirals utterly out of sync with our societies; our inability to plan for the decline of cheap fossil fuels; seemingly inescapable waves of austerity; untenable trends of wealth concentration; the rise of violent extremisms in so many ways in so many places… Of course all of these processes are intertwined with one another.
Given this big picture, it certainly came as a surprise to many of us (to me most of all) that this year’s Peace Prize of the German Book Trade was given to a figure such as myself who is associated with the rise of digital technologies. Aren’t digital toys just a flimsy froth that decorates big dark waves?
Digital designs have certainly brought about noisy changes to our culture and politics.
excerpted from Jaron Lanier‘s acceptance speech for the 2014 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
VDMX – back to the future
After not doing any recent public visual-sonic improv performance work — actually since 2008 in Berlin at the Haus der Kunst — I decided to grab the updated version of VDMX. Although I’ve been a big promoter of the software from Vidvox for a dozen years, I slowed down using it back in 2008. But I saw they were having a $99 sale for starving artists, students, and others. So, what the hell, I emailed David Lublin who took over from Johnny DeKam at Vidvox, and got set up with the discount.
I included VDMX in the Digital Art course I taught at CU last year, but overall the students reacted with a modicum of revulsion, having to learn the platform (learning anything that wasn’t PhotoShop — the ‘definition’ of digital in many ‘new media’ programs in the 1990s!). That was a big disappointment! I wonder if any of them continued with it, or took anything away from that class. Doubtful, given the critiques.
While I will take on some responsibility for the lapse, the failure, I would also invoke the thoughts of William Deresiewicz in his article in the New Republic suggesting how warped things have gotten in the US Higher Education system.
Anyway, I’m proud of the fact that, early on in my teaching career I decided that if I ever burned out or was not able to inspire my students somehow (or if I even approached that state) — like so many folks I saw around working full-time in the system — that I would stop. It happened, and I did, but again, the burn-out wasn’t a product of some internal lack of imagination of what teaching could be, but more how bankrupt the system supporting learning had become. Too many administrators, too many drains on the integrity of the learning body, too much stress within the young people, and no way for any but the ‘elite’ research faculty members to make even a minimal living. Now, this conclusion of a teaching ‘career’ applies presently only to the US generally. If some alternative situation jumped into my awareness, I would carefully look it over for signs of life. And any European or other international gig I would definitely consider.
So, back to the art work.
That and beginning the editing process of the third Migrating Academies book with Mindaugas. He’s in Nida right now on the last of 17 workshops that he has facilitated for this project (since our last book). Amazing work!
Carl Canary
Frieder tells me that a student of his challenged him to deal with Twitter, so, starting a few months ago, he committed to making a Twitter account and sending one tweet a day for the following year. For some brilliant insights into informatiks, computing, human systems, digital art, algorithm, follow @CarlCanary!
Storage Disposition (To Europe)
Drives to bring:
moog, maltese, methuselah, moral
Laptop: mambo
Portable Drives:
Toshiba (black)
moog – 930 Gb k
all_dv_tapes, Hi8_tapes, ntsc, pal;
maltese – 930 Gb k
archive_jh; projects
methuselah – 700 Gb k
sounds&musik
Toshiba (green)
moral – 700 Gb k
Time Machine back-up
University of Colorado – Boulder, US / Advanced Digital Art :: Jan-May.13
Dayton Daft; Connor Dudley; Mitch Harris; Bethanie Heebner; Ryan Messett; Jeannie Nguyen; Kelley O’Hare; Tina Phenix; Julia Reck; Jenny Skluth; BiYing Su; Hsuan Wang; Emily Weisiger
University of Colorado – Boulder, US / History and Theory of Digital Art :: Jan-May.13
Anna Cook; Ethan Daniel; Sean Faling; Thomas Huber; Jeannie Nguyen; Matthew Nickells; Andrew Oetjen; Kelley O’Hare; Kate Phillips; Nell Pollak; BiYing Su
University of Colorado – Boulder, US / TAM:Meaning of Information Technology :: Jan-May.13
Zachary Ardente; Tristan Bambauer; Kelsey Brown; Sara Bryant; Brandi Darnell; Will Dow; Dillon Drenzek; Maddy Fendell; Wynter Finley; Ellyn Green; Christine Hurty; Alex Klinger; Vincent McComb; Adam Meis; Sydney Nelson; Anna Pearson; Mike Pollard; Ryan Wilding; Jesse Zarat
still sick
no tweets these days, (as I have recently jacked up the twit account, with mixed feelings, as a PR effort on this blog). at the same time that GoDaddy is still silent on the fix necessary for the SQL server driving this and my other 5 blog platforms. technology failures, strangely or not, do seem to correlate with physical breakdown. and of course, it’s Spring Break when I have a thousand things to do to prep for leaving in 5 weeks. faugh.
Julian Bigelow was frustrated that the serial, address-constrained, clock-driven architecture of computers became standard because it is so inefficient. He thought that templates (recognition devices) would work better than addresses. The machine he had built for von Neumann ran on sequences rather than a clock. In 1999 Bigelow told George Dyson, “Sequence is different from time. No time is there.” That’s why the digital world keeps accelerating in relation to our analog world, which is based on time, and why from the perspective of the computational world, our world keeps slowing down.
The acceleration is reflected in the self-replication of computers, Dyson noted: “By now five or six trillion transistors per second are being added to the digital universe, and they’re all connected.” Dyson is a kayak builder, emulating the wood-scarce Arctic natives to work with minimum frame inside a skin craft. But in the tropics, where there is a surplus of wood, natives make dugout canoes, formed by removing wood. “We’re now surrounded by so much information,” Dyson concluded, “we have to become dugout canoe builders. The buzzword of last year was ‘big data.’ Here’s my definition of the situation: Big data is what happened when the cost of storing information became less than the cost of throwing it away. — Stewart Brand
digital art class
Wednesday, 23 January, 1963
Spent the day with W. E. White of the Physics Lab, and Sheldon Phillips, talking about densitomoters w/ digitizers. I was shown 3 sets of gear. One used EKCo Type 31 optics, for A/D an HP digitizing VM w/ card punch output, and an x-y plotter. Another used a Coleman A/D, a M/H XY plotter & 526 Punch. Several samples were obtained (cards & data). Apparently +/- .02 density is about as close as the limits of gear, film, & processing will permit.
Also explored two questions phone over by ELE: 1) What is the recommended location of the photo processing in relation to the base of the a/c?, and 2) can the processed film be shipped w/o deterioration? He wanted answers to these phoned to Capt. Black at BSD. On 1) No particular location; the latent image fades some on the first few minutes after processing. If the exposed film is stored according to the ASA standard, the changes are relatively small. On 2) The changes in density are quite small for processed film; changes in dimension can be serious if no marks are on each frame.
Snow
Cold
Car wouldn’t start, so got it pushed ($2.00). It was badly flooded. Then went to Sears and bought a new battery as the (+) terminal was broken out of the case on the old one.
Snowing all day with slippery roads.
Drove out to Hamlin Beach to see the Lake in a storm. The beach is gravel — and with many hills and what looked like a steep bank at the water’s edge.
Monday, 21 January, 1963
Informed by ELE about 10 AM that instructions from AFSC via CRW to W. Wells had been rec’d late Friday to the effect that A is to handle the DP for the STV operation! I didn’t see how the Air Force could bypass A on this one, in spite of the foot-dragging of A. We are to have a session with them starting 29 Jan., a week from Tuesday. Apparently, Getting, Krause, & Durand have been at work. Durard will certainly put sand in the mill, at whatever job he works on.
Had phone conversation with Jim Knight, jointly concluded to go on out to Kwaj rather that to Pasadena now & Kwaj later.
Talked with WW on going to Rochester EKCo. He said his instructions from CRW are to continue as we have been. He was in the process of setting up an agenda w/ an A chap from El Segundo for next Tuesday. He thot it ok to go to EKCo on the densitometer w/ digital output.
Overcast
It suddenly occurred to me that I forgot to write to HJO as we agreed on Friday night! I must say I’m still so tired that I can hardly think straight, particularly after being informed that our work of the past 2 or 3 months will be taken over by A.
University of Colorado – Boulder, US / TAM:Meaning of Information Technology :: Aug-Dec.12
Caitlin Ammerman, Shane Bauldauf, Hannah Black, Graham Bowman, Kelly Brichta, Sam Carnes, Sam Carrothers, Alyx Chapman, Blake Clapp-Lee, Anna Cook, Dakota Cotton, Sammie Elvove, Lulu Eyears, Jon Giehl, Michelle Harrison, Becca Herschorn, Scott Hodges, Laura Kauffman, Caroline Kennedy, Leigh Marr, Vahid Mazdeh, Davis McClure, Mallorie McDowell , Katie McMenamin, Stephen Motta, Harper Nelson, Daniel Rankin, Melanie Rogers, Peter Sawers, Betsy Schiel, Florencia Selasco, Mitchell Sellinger, David Stanek, Maggie Still, Madeleine Towne, Hannah Tuell, Kelly Turgeon, Patrick Vargas, Mitchell Wolfe
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
analogic lies
Man is the only organism known to use both the analogic and the digital modes of communication. The significance of this is still very inadequately understood, but can hardly be overrated. On the one hand there can be no doubt that man communicates digitally. In fact, most, if not all, of his civilized achievement would be unthinkable without his having evolved digital language. This is particularly important for the sharing of information about objects and for the time-binding function of the transmission of knowledge. And yet there exists a vast area where we rely almost exclusively on analogic communication, often with very little change from the analogic inheritance handed down to us from our mammalian ancestors. This is the area of relationship. Based on Tinbergen (1953) and Lorenz (1952), as well as his own research, Bateson (1955) has shown that vocalizations, intention movements, and mood signs of animals are analogic communications by which they define the nature of their relationships, rather than making denotative statements about objects. Thus, to take one of his examples, when I open the refrigerator and the cat comes, rubs against my legs, and mews, this does not mean “I want milk” — as a human being would express it — but invokes a specific relationship, “Be mother to me,” because such behavior is only observed in kittens in relation to adult cats, and never between two grownup animals. Conversely, pet lovers often are convinced that their animals “understand” their speech. What the animal does understand, needless to say, is certainly not the meaning of the words, but the wealth of analogic communication that goes with speech. Indeed, wherever relationship is the central issue of communication, we find that digital language is almost meaningless. This is not only the case between animals and between man and animal, but in many other contingencies in human life, e.g., courtship, love, succor, combat, and, of course, in all dealings with very young children or severely disturbed mental patients. Children, fools, and animals have always been credited with particular intuition regarding the sincerity or insincerity of human attitudes, for it is easy to profess something verbally, but difficult to carry a lie into the realm of the analogic.
Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J.H. & Jackson, D.D., 1967. Some Tentative Axioms of Communication. In Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Friday, 22 June, 1962
Tried to find some material in the Library on the design of digital data systems, but wasn’t too successful.
Fog – Overcast – 55˚F
It was cool last night; I slept better than usual.
Went in to PSC for a 6:30 PM met. of the Brd. of Christian Endeavor, where I and Woody presented the material we worked up on 13 June to the Brd. It got what I thot a somewhat apathetic reception, but there were no dissenting votes. I raised the question about trying to get across to the students the material we have in mind; HJO thot the instructors would not encounter much difficulty.
Energetics and Informatics – Day 10 – eNZed
The ADA Symposium officially starts up, fueled by some excellent, tasty grub for breaks and for lunch. (sorry, no comprehensive notes here… no time at the time and no memory ex post facto.)
Julian and I do an impromptu dialogue on Energetics and Informatics in the stead of Graham Harwood’s keynote about his work Coal Fired Computer, as he’s quite ill right now and couldn’t Skype in. As Julian and I have been talking so much in the last week, it is a natural extension of that dialogue.
(17:24, stereo audio, 40.6 mb)
The day is full, ending with Doug Kahn’s talk, dinner, and a video screening. Packing things up and taking them back to the house, and I crash.
Can’t remember which evening Julian fell down his stairs after getting the girls to bed, dislocating his toe, and requiring Sophie to drive him to the hospital to have it reset. Ouch!
waka – Day 6 – eNZed
Up early again, before all the girls are off to school, the morning routines are quite entertaining to witness. Compared to similarly-aged kids in other places (the US!), all the kids I’ve met here seem quite relaxed. Is it the culture here, or? There is a laid-back quality, but I haven’t been here long enough to see how it suffuses through the society. There have to be substantial social issues, with colonialism having left such an influence on things. The stack of histories of NZ that Kerry loaned me before traveling told of savage open conflict until around the time of the US Civil War which is quite recent. Though no longer in direct living memory, it is still quite close. It’s is obvious, from the clear-cut timbering alone, seen from the air, that there is an ongoing and deep conflict over land-use, with powerful development and/or exploitation forces. On the other hand, there are definitely strong voices for nurturing the environment (and human lives on the island) back to something more sustainable.
We take a visit to the waka (canoe) boathouse to check on things — there is a crew of young gals who are practicing waka racing for the national championship. A group of absolutely charming young women.
Mike, our main Maori host comes by, what a expansive and powerful spirit he has! Julian has really cultivated some amazing connections with people here. Everyone met so far has been friendly, open, welcoming, relaxed, ready with a smile, along with some challenging/enLightening conversations.
Hardly time to make any entries now that the road has come up to meet my feet, so to say. Prepping mentally for the symposium coming up in a few days. But there is still so much indeterminacy that I will really have to improvise, and simply go with the available and auspicious energies of the moment. Many stories are already told about energy and informatics.
Towards sunset, an impromptu picnic on river turns out to be a neighborhood gathering, yet another example of a relaxed bunch of folks. Such a (WELCOME!) contrast to Sydney!
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”
From The Regime of Amplification to The Road
[editor: this document was used for a mid-way doctoral assessment at the University of Technology Sydney and no longer reflects the final content of the PhD dissertation as of the April 2012 submission at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The presentation was accompanied by the video that is posted at the end.]
Abstract
The DCA project “The Road” is a psycho-geographic perambulation through a web of personal, social, and universal trajectories which form a new knowledge-base on the cosmos as an entropic system of energy flows. Within this worldview the project explores human presence, encounter, and interaction including a close look at the effects of techno-socially prescribed protocols on those indeterminate flows of energy. As a multi-modal online data-space, the project offers a variety of navigational strategies connecting a rich variety of audio, video, text, and image sources from the candidate’s extensive personal archive of creative material.
Introduction
The armature for this DCA as originally proposed was the concept of the amplifier. An amplifier is essentially a device that takes an incoming flow of energy (signal), and through an influx of power, generates a defined outflow of energy with a greater (directed) intensity. The amplification process needs an independent energy source to increase the signal strength. It also requires a set of protocols that guide the flow of energy from input through output: a coherent signal is a controlled energy flow as defined by applied protocols.
The road, as an expression of a techno-social system (TSS), exemplifies, or, more precisely, is one of these protocol-defined pathways. It was this realization during the last year of research which shifted my focus from the amplifier to the road as both a real and metaphoric concept that opens a rich space for inquiry. The road allows the TSS to express amplified energy flows along its protocol-defined pathway. It is not difficult to conceptually extend the idea of the road as any pathway for the directed and concentrated expression of energy of a TSS. more “From The Regime of Amplification to The Road”
(How to Sit) Zazen
It’s a good example of the affect of mediation on socially-generated practices of any sort [this came into mind when I saw a poster advertising a IEEE conference here in Sydney. The posted contained all the recognized and standardized functions of conferences anywhere on any subject. The cocktail evening cruises on the ________ (fill in the blank) river/harbor/lake. The hospitality suites in the _________ (fill in the blank) hotel. The keynotes by famous personages. The plenaries, the break-outs, the posters, workshops, and seminars. yadda, yadda. Don’t people get tired of this endless repetition of heavily coded social protocols?]
The following was downloaded from the UM (University of Minnesota) original Gopher online text retrieval system sometime in the winter of 1991-92. I think it’s the first document (extant) that I downloaded via that new networked document system — the direct precursor of the WWW. Coming around in a very long, very wide circle, from the roots of the digital coming-to-being in the last millennium, breathe deeply:
1. Sit on the forward third of a chair or cushion.
more “(How to Sit) Zazen”
CLUI: Day Seventeen — Bonneville
There is a large (black) raven (Corvus corax) who is in residence in the Enola Gay Hangar. There are some major areas of the roof and sides of the hangar where the corrugated sheeting has (surely!)been blown off over the years, so the interior is exposed to the elements and to natural energies. This raven (or two) is in residence somewhere high in the iron girders. Much of each day, especially during morning and evening, the raven is seen flying very purposefully between the hangar and a spot some 200 meters east of the hangar where there are some low scrubby bushes and open ground. (S)he flies back and forth not far from the window that I look out from on occasion as I work when inside the residency unit. Movement out the window catches my attention and about half the time it is the raven making this low and very determinate transit between the hangar and this spot. Occasionally the movement will be from the ground squirrel couple who has taken up residence in the underbelly of the Airstream, and otherwise, the few lizards will do their peculiar dances across the gravelly yard when it is warm; and lately, a handful of very small birds will spend the early evening hours, before sunset, picking aphids off the salt brush bush growing in the yard. But it is the raven who is most compelling. Back and forth. Before I leave, I want to hang out in the watch-tower and simply observe the flight cycle. I reckon (s)he’s gathering sticks for a nest, but I haven’t clearly seen anything in his/her beak on the flights back to the hangar, so it’s a question: what’s ‘e doin’? Actually it could be a pair of them, they are know to find a partner and mate for life. Hmmm, novel idea…
The ground squirrel pair is another matter. They’re gaining access to the otherwise pretty solid and gapless lower framework of the Airstream via the fold-out step area below the front door. There are also areas for critters to enter via the electrical and water hookup doors. One of those has a broken latch, so I think I will tap and screw that one down semi-permanently as the vehicle isn’t going to be moved anytime soon.
Neal and I head out to the Bonneville Flats towards evening. I want to cycle and he has some filming to do. Amazing Light. I cycle for about an hour, going about 8-10 miles out and then back. Hard to tell, dimensions are reduced to time alone (and body metrics). About five miles out there is a cluster of vehicles, apparently a photo shoot happening. Cycling down the ‘main drag’ of the speed-test area is a singular experience. Speed becomes necessary to overcome the lack of Cartesian cues, no pathway. Got to get somewhere. Got to approach those little specks in the distance. Oh, those are cars, sure takes a long time to get closer. Hit some areas where the salt is wet and there are loose crystals which splatter all over me. It mostly appears like ice, so brain is thinking danger! slick!, but it is quite the opposite, sticky like climbing on limestone.
The accompanying images are suffering from more digital camera woes — dust on the CCD. Absolutely disgusting. I don’t have a proper removal kit, and this Nikon model doesn’t have one of the vibrating sensors that can dislodge that extremely irritating blobs that end up on the sensor despite me never taking the lens off. Yet another disappointment with this Nikon (D200) — for the price paid it is real garbage compared to the old analog F2as and even Nikkormats from the 1970’s. I never had dust-on-film problems like this, ever! Neal has a nice Canon SLR system from his university, along with a HD 3-CCD chip DV cam. I’m jealous.
on the road again
Heading out on a three-month road-trip. Tailwind across the reservation at least part of the time. Embarkation for slickrock and slot canyons, salt pans, playa, and rotated fault-blocks. Heavy tailwind expected, along with winter weather for the rest of the week across the entire west. Hope to appear, unscathed, at the other end in Wendover.
The road fills the head with eye-blink disorientation. Transient fragments of thoughts thrum along in no particular order, no rhythm, as unconnected as any sequence of fated events: reflecting fated events in minds-eyes. Too much seen outside the window, beyond the amorphous silica barrier. And too much not sensible because of that attenuated presence versus the full immersion. (Virtual) movement. Looking for roadside memorials this time. Something to lock the thoughts into the reality of mortal coils. Find a few. Stopping for them is always a bit tricky, especially with a 65- or 75-mph speed limit. I drive a bit slow with this old vehicle of mine, and slower still so that once I spy a cross of some sort, I can safely stop on the shoulder. To die on the same stretch of road somehow would not be auspicious; under the wide silent sky and red cliffs, stars, with the smell of spring sage in the air. Wind passing through shredded plastic bags caught on the barbed-wire fence. Someone told me those bags are called witches panties. A small golden bell tinkles vacantly, tied to a wreath of plastic flowers shivering in the wind.
What is the difference between that containable in the reduced tracing of recorded, reproduced, recreated image or sound and that which resists the reductive process with an impassive tenacity, no, a merely passive and eternal persistence. The difference lies in what the observer brings to the reductive process and what the hearer, viewer brings when consuming the reduced trace. It has little if anything to the originary energy of the thing, das Ding, das Ganze, itself. The emanations affect the reduction, there is a direct correlation, but in the technique, the process of reduction is deeply tied to the techno-social. No way to decouple that. (Or is there?)
All the way from telling stories to making movies to painting canvases to building houses.
What is the advantage of shunting the energy of a situation through more and more of the techno-social domain? Or does it matter at all? Compare (telling) stories in person about an experience (sono-linguistic reductions) with posting digital photographs online (visible radiation reductions). In principle a reduction is a reduction is a reduction. And when compared the the situated phenomena itself, any and all reductions are not the thing itself.
The dam at Lake Powell, as with the Hoover, a high-security zone, protected by hired guns. No bags allowed in the visitors center. Celebrations of all that the techno-social can bring to the merely social, along with a big-screen overview of the lake at 59-percent-capacity with a fat white bathtub ring contrasting the red rock cliffs. German tourists debate the advantages of the Best Western versus the Quality Inn motels.
technology fails
The latch handles on both the driver- and passenger-side door are broken. There is a certain geometry on the plastic lever-arm which, over time of repeated lifting motions, fails. So I have to replace them. The truck is relatively old, compared to the average age of vehicles on the road. I call the Toyota dealer nearby, and they want almost USD100 for each replacement handle. This is called an OEM part — Original Equipment Manufactured — a part which carries some of the branded weight of the maker and its record of quality along with a premium price (including a substantial markup to underwrite the existence of the dealer distribution system). Too much! I knew this would be the case before I called, but I wanted to set a ceiling price before looking elsewhere, online. This particular vehicle model was globally a widely-distributed frame, body, and engine combination and so there turns out to be a substantial non-OEM parts market. The only question is one of quality. Non-OEM parts online appear to be both Mainland Chinese- and Taiwanese-made with what seems to be a substantial US distribution presence in the form of highly discounted warehouses designed for online mail-order sales (with Ebay, Amazon, and their own web sales presence). I find the parts, in several styles (chromed plastic and black) for a small fraction of the OEM cost, USD 20 with free shipping. more “technology fails”
netart 2009 – VisitorsStudio
The following quick essay was for the last and final edition of the annual netarts awards from the Machida Museum in Tokyo:
Grand Prize for this year, the online platform VisitorsStudio, is not a complete newcomer to the netart scene — it’s been running as a live visual-sonic collaboratory for a few years now. As a playground, it offers many degrees of freedom within what appears at first to be a very restrictive environment. But, isn’t it true that all play-places have limits? Your mother would never let you go off just anywhere and play. Your mother would certainly approve of VisitorsStudio. The limits of VisitorsStudio lie primarily in the intriguing area of file sizes (more on that shortly). The interface is intuitive and straight forward, and does not entail a steep learning curve: anyone can create mesmerizing works in no time.
The most obvious elements in digital ‘mash-up’ play are the text, the image (still and moving), and the sound. Participants in VisitorsStudio may gather these elements themselves and using a rich set of live controls make compelling live mixes. There is an existing database of files to work with, or, you can prepare your own media library to upload and play with. This is where each sound, image, or video file is limited to a 200kb maximum size — you will be surprised at what can be done — the result is absolute proof that great things come in small packages.
VisitorsStudio is available for special performances and makes an ideal platform for educators in all settings who wish to stimulate imaginations with real interactive digital art — it’s not simulated and it’s not eye-candy. As a collaborative tool, it does not aggressively take the foreground in the process, but rather works as a solid and supportive background element for seamless play.
Of course, the best way to enjoy a jam session is with a heavy-duty sound system and a 72-inch plasma screen or a video projector. You will be the resident visual-sonic artist. But intimate small-screen solo play is also very satisfying. The best feature is the possibility for live remote partners and audience. Invite your friends half-way around the world to join you in a jam session!
Technically, VisitorsStudio needs only an internet connection and a browser running the latest version of the Flash plugin. And, hey, if we ask, maybe they will port a Wii controller to VisitorsStudio! Wouldn’t that be fun? Let’s play!
One of the Honorable Mentions for the 2009 netart award is SiTO’s gridcosm project which, if there ever was a primordial interactive play-place online, this is it. Gridcosm was initiated by Ed Stasny way back in 1997 as an outgrowth of SiTO’s live online image mash-up collaborations. That’s in the Precambrian era of internet time! It even has its own Wikipedia entry! But gridcosm clearly tapped into something fundamental — with a fresh and accessible interface design; a solid back-end code; and exuding a rare social sensibility of precisely what it means to collaborate online — there are hundreds of contributors. A dozen years later, the collaborative space is continuously full with a vibrant and evolving palette of personalities and plenty evidence of creative juice spilling out onto the screen. The acronym SiTO originally came from OTIS (Operational Term is Stimulate) which was the motto of the nascent online collective collaboratory back in 1994 or so. So, kudos to gridcosm for sheer staying power and what looks to be a lively future. How many layers does an artwork need to have for it to be classified as cosmologically significant? Visit gridcosm and discover the answer to this profound question! It’s an open project for anyone to jump into — as are all the SiTO collaborative projects — so, check it out!
John Hopkins, Sydney, Australia, 15.Nov.2009
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?
keywording, filing
such a massive issue in a trans-disciplinary space. listing everything or nothing or SIPs (Statistically Improbable Phrases). maybe the SIPs would be the best phenomena, as it is a tangible mapping of non-standard word usage … mapping out new conceptual spaces. kind of like those emails from a few years back, spewed out by random text generators (or a thousand drunken monkeys reading the confetti of paper-shredded copies of Naked Lunch and pausing at spontaneously proscribed intervals to jot notes on where precisely those confetti-signs sent their proto-humanoid minds.
Ich bin mit meinem Dasein zufrieden(?)
oder
Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. — Samuel Butler
heavy shuffling through the digital archive and web links to assemble something meaningful via zotero. heavy work, reading reading reading. some semi-classics to remind, and enjoy the luxury of reading to gain or revivify knowledge. Kittler, Grammaphone, Film, Typewriter; Latour, Reassembling the Social; Vygotsky, Thought and Language; McLuhan, Understanding Media, along with reviewing the already substantial library/bibliography assembled on my hard drive from the last 20 years of info-filtering in the media-sphere. dragging copies of all that into Zotero, slowly, along with hundreds of bookmarked sources, and then the keywording begins, starting the cycle. plenty of SIPs there.
such a massive issue in a trans-disciplinary space, etc…
Zotero, an open-source project, by-the-way, a victor today when a Circuit Court judge throws out a law-suit coming from Thomson-Reuters, makers of EndNote, the monopoly research/thesis writing/citation tool out there in academia.
no pix
decided not to acquire any new digital traces of movement and seeing until the new path opens fully. lunch with Norie yesterday begins a mapping of the process. meeting with a variety of Others. most completely unknown. stimulating but exhausting. housing still not 100% settled, at all. but a bed for the sleeping in the small studio space with the palm tree and the Cooks River out the window.
living room installation
the work for the Williamson living room is finally finished and gets installed the day before I arrive. it works out quite okay for the space (opposite a huge picture window looking out on North Table Mountain). the Center hasn’t manifest itself at quite this scale before. the process was time-consuming, but Cyndy, a customer-service rep at Reed Photo where it was printed and mounted made it fairly painless. a good exercise to run through with digital scans of some of the black-and-white negatives scans I’ve been making. not too expensive, and quite spectacular quality on Fuji papers. mounting is expensive, however. but the whole process seems ripe for exhibition development of works that I started sketching 20 or more years ago — in the form of (long)tall scroll pieces that have multiple images on a single hanging piece of paper. gotta get to it! a slow day recovering from the long day before. Rick briefs me on the spike in activity surrounding the recent shale-gas plays in North America. missed that development in the last years, totally. StatOil alone plans 15,000 wells in the Marcellus formation of Pennsylvania and New York states. holy cow!
Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)
PROPOSAL :: Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)
(a) Name, address, URL, email and one page CV of author.
John Hopkins
John Hopkins is a networker, artist, and educator occupied across a wide swath of techno-social systems with an extensive global network presence. He is active in numerous global creative networks beginning with the Cassette Underground and the Mail Art networks in the 1980’s and merging seamlessly into the propagating telecommunications networks of the present. He has engaged in many individual and collective dialogues concerning the facilitation of collaborative creative situations, and has facilitated or participated in numerous distributed projects.
https://neoscenes.net/blog/cv-resume
(b) A 1000 word proposal that should be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 250 words and a list of keywords to indicate the subject area of the chapter. [Each of the commissioned chapters will contain text, images, videos, and/or audio.]
ABSTRACT more “Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)”
thesis proposal :: Background
Background for Research
While individual human presence in this world has fundamental repercussions on be-ing, it is the ever-present and synergistic exchange between humans — forming what I call a “continuum of relation” — that governs much of life. This energetic field of human relation is sometimes fraught with difficulties and complications in spite of the rich and necessary dynamic it brings to life. Technology, as a ubiquitous factor in mediating human relation, often dominates while presented as providing the only opportunity for mediated connection and interaction between humans.
Presence, as apprehended by the Other, circumscribes a range of sensory inputs that require energy (from the Self) to stimulate and drive. The efficacy and sustainability of human connection builds on the very real and tangible transmissions and receptions of energy between the Self and the Other. An interconnected plurality of dialectic human relation may be described as a network. These networks, made up of a web of Self-Other connections form the base fabric of the continuum of relation. Technology appears in these networks as the mediating pathway that is the carrier of energy from node to node, person to person. Technological systems also appear to apply absolute restraints on and attenuation of the idiosyncratic flows inherent in that continuum of relation. The discrete objects that populate the (technological) landscape of the continuum of relation and that modulate the character of communications are literally artifacts of a materialist point of view. A primary assumption in my research is that a materialist or mechanistic view of the world no longer suffices to adequately circumscribe the phenomena occurring within the continuum of relation. more “thesis proposal :: Background”
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”
honeymoon’s over
dredging (scanning) personal archives, negatives unseen until now — 1979, 1989, 1992, 1996, and then far back into pre-histories. an image of my mother taken by my father on their honeymoon in 1945. near Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.
it takes a day for one roll of 36 exposures, and entails multitasking that makes any coherent writing impossible. editing is possible, but not raw writing. and acquiring more digital scans seems vaguely senseless. what to do with all the ones that already are there? sounds, videos, texts, images. when life gets reduced to leaving traces, what then is life? stepping out of life to make a transitory tracing of energies, then stepping out for a longer time to take that tracing and massaging it into something coherent. (what is coherency?) much massage makes mashed potatoes out of some material. monster mash. right back to the archaic world of remix culture which is so incredibly boorish.
Bo Diddley 1928 – 2008
Bo Diddley went on to heaven yesterday it is said:
Garry Mitchell, a grandson of Diddley and one of more than 35 family members at the musician’s home when he died at about 1:45 a.m. EDT, said his death was not unexpected.
“There was a gospel song that was sang and he said ‘wow’ with a thumbs up,” Mitchell told Reuters, when asked to describe the scene at Diddley’s deathbed.
“There was a gospel song that was sang and he said ‘wow’ with a thumbs up,” Mitchell told Reuters, when asked to describe the scene at Diddley’s deathbed.
“The song was ‘Walk Around Heaven’ and in his last words he stated that he was going to heaven.”
I took this photo at a concert that Bo did in the Green Center at the Colorado School of Mines as the kick-off concert of the annual E-Day party weekend, April 1979. As Special Editor for the student newspaper, hung around back-stage with Bo and his band, made some shots there, but unfortunately don’t have those scanned yet in my digital archive at the moment. The acoustics of the auditorium were lousy, and the concert wasn’t particularly memorable, but the guy can definitely rock!
Steve Cisler 1942 – 2008
then get the news that Steve Cisler passed away yesterday. what a bummer. I always read his postings on nettime and a few other lists. Paul Jones has a detailed outline of some of Steve’s many activities. as an update, another blog came online for condolences: https://communitynetworking2008.wordpress.com/.
prepping for the performance tomorrow night. never feeling ready with only half my normal equipment. got the files, but no midi/usb controller nor keyboard. and not even the right software. will be winging it. and who knows about the audience. but whatever the case, Said gives one pathway!
Least of all should an intellectual be there to make his/her audience feel good: the whole point is to be embarrassing, contrary, even unpleasant. — Edward Said
the price you pay
in response to this question posed by Annick Bureaud on the [new media curating] list (in a discussion about access to digital information):
The question might be : how much do you (really) pay in order to get access to an online document, how much the people who have worked to provide the access to this document are paid, who (ultimately) pays for this service?
sotto voce: The cost (what you pay) is directly correlated to the depth of your embeddedness, your degree of participation in the techno-social system. For example, to simply ‘own’ a laptop, I calculated over the past 15 years I spend around USD 120 / month. This does not include cost of upgrades and peripherals, telecom, electrical, or other costs. This is only having the machine sitting on my lap. Of course, to participate in the techno-social system more “the price you pay”
empyre musings
John von Seggern (on empyre wireless sustainability):
I agree with you, however we shouldn’t confuse the Internet/digital networks in general with the larger techno-social system within which they exist. In point of fact, digital networks perform many tasks much more energy-efficiently than we could do without them (telecommuting vs. actual jet travel for example), so I would expect them to continue to thrive in an energy-constrained future even if many other facets of our society are radically reconfigured.
sotto voce: But in the end, that’s a little like saying how much money I will save by buying a pair of pants at 50% off the regular price. I don’t save anything, I spend money buying the pants.
The Internet as an infrastructure cannot (except theoretically) be excised from the techno-social system that it is embedded within. Energy consumption of that system rises, is rising. Web 2.0 sites brought online huge numbers of energy-consuming server farms which never existed when users did not store social networking data, for example. And the energy usage stats can’t be limited to nation-states, because it’s a global boat we are (apparently) floating in. It’s like saying the US uses far less energy making steel now than it did 50 years ago. What about how much it consumes? And where was the other steel made? The same argument was also used with digital creating “paperless” offices — track paper usage!
sotto voce: Of course, in the process of the engineered evolution of any particular device there will be optimization — that is the goal of engineering. If that wasn’t the case, our system would have never been marginally sustainable from the beginning. Extracting stats on theoretically isolated elements is not valid except for more back-slapping “we’ve done it, we’ve found a way to have and eat our cake”—and it represents no real solution. It is exactly this localized isolation of elements which allows this mentality to persist. Just as with many previous industrial advances where a resource was abundant, any negative affects of the use of that resource was able to be overlooked by the end user who was somehow isolated (usually geographically) from them. That geographic isolation is no longer possible when the effects are global. Think, around the globe, there are no isolated corners to sit anymore.
This is exactly the point that I am making—that unless people realize radical shifts in their/our relationship with the deep and broad techno-social infrastructure, we are not making real reductions in the overall footprint, and it is the size of the cumulative footprint that will spell the difference between sustainability or the alternative which is only dimly making itself known through the fog of naivety. (and believe me, I don’t place myself above the fray, but energy consumption and the reliance on the largely invisible functioning of that globe-spanning infrastructure is a seriously addictive way to go).
migrating reality
Miga asked if I would participate in these two projects, in the first as redactor, in the second as a presenter and as a performance artist. should be interesting. especially as it is occurring at the same time as the conference in Savannah. of necessity, I will appear in Savannah virtually, and in person here in Berlin. that’s the easiest option!
we meet down at the Galerie der Künste to scope out the situation.
Migrating is reality. Reality is migrating.
The “Migrating Reality Project” organized between 04-05 April 2008 at the Galerie der Künste (Berlin), Potsdamer Str. 93, is a live platform to discuss the mixing and remixing of art forms and digital data flows within the context of the current worldwide reality of migration.
From 01 March in cooperation with the online ‘zine balsas.cc for media and technology we are initiating a focused look at the migration between reality, media, technologies, art, spaces, disciplines, politics, and networks. Migration interests us in cultural and technological aspects as well as in aspects of the movement of different objects and subjects. Balsas.cc has been publishing online in Lithuanian and English from Vilnius, Lithuania since 2005. Every fourth month it announces a new topic and as of now “Migrating Reality” is open for your interpretation.
We invite the submission of texts, sounds, and visuals (photo, video, etc) which will help us to delve deeper into the subject during the Berlin project. Balsas.cc is stimulating interest in the generation and publishing of ideas online — the most important of which will be published in the printed catalog at the end of 2008. We are looking for not only pure texts but also in migrating formats, interdisciplinary discussions, interviews, and the meetings of artists and theoreticians. Please submit texts in English, German, and Lithuanian to balsas@vilma.cc. The rolling submission and publication period is from 01 March to 01 June.
Editorial Board: Vytautas Michelkevicius, Mindaugas Gapsevicius, Zilvinas Lilas, and John Hopkins
The conference and exhibition Migrating Reality is organised by >top – Verein zur Förderung kultureller Praxis e.V. in Berlin and KHM – Kunsthochschule für Medien in Köln. It is also generously supported by the Embassy of Lithuania in Germany within the framework of the German-Baltic Year 2008.
The event focuses on the Baltic nation of Lithuania. In the last fifteen years, more than ten percent of Lithuania’s population has emigrated, among them numerous individuals engaged in the cultural sector. Others, while still living in Lithuania, are deeply engaged with the subject of migration. Selected individuals from both these groups will present their work at the conference and exhibition.
Migrating Reality deals specifically with the realities of migration and migrating realities that are independent of global structural changes and economic or cultural processes and are opening unique opportunities for creative exchange.
Electronic and digital cultures generate completely new forms of migration. In the creative arts, new phenomena related to migration and the synergies of disparate systems are emerging. Artistic products evolve from traditional forms to hybrid digital forms. Analogue products are being digitized; data spaces are trans-located from one data storage system to another; existing sounds, images, and texts are re-mixed and fused into new data sets.
The emergent processes of migration generate temporary autonomous zones where socio-political actions occur without the interference of formal control mechanisms. These zones and enclaves appear in physical space as well as in virtual space. By integrating these into available structures and temporarily interconnecting them, new trajectories and ideas are created.
Migration is reality and reality is migrating. This dialectic, appearing as a banal topic in everyday politico-economic debate, includes inarticulate issues which, by their fragmented nature have to be dealt with through creative multidisciplinary means. Only occasionally do components of the migrating global situation surface in the mass media, within individual mediums of expression, or in exhibitions as documentation and artwork. This is likely because dealing with the realities of migration in an explicitly European context means accepting the potential for conflict.
This trans-cultural German-Lithuanian event will take on the risk in highlighting certain fragments of the discourse. Participants will be invited to piece together aspects of this inexorable global mobility on the one hand and of retrograde power relations on the other.
info growth
the creative use of digital networks needs to proceed with an understanding of the underlying principle of human relation as the situated potential for the real exchange of energy. I have stated this so many times, in so many variations that I’ve gotten tired of it. is it obvious? or useless?
the following from the introduction to a conference taking place in London at the London School of Economics in April. I’d like to go, but can’t afford it. no scholarships available.
Taken together, these developments establish a new socio-economic environment in which information-based operations, and information goods and services acquire crucial importance. This is clearly shown in the rapid ascent to economic dominance of internet-based companies that demonstrate superior data editing and information management strategies. New commercial possibilities steadily develop around the production, ordering and distribution of information, as data become interoperable across sources and older forms of information (e.g. image, text and sound) are brought to bear upon one another. But information growth has wider social implications as well. The involvement of information in every walk of life redefines the relationship between information and reality, and reshapes the social practices through which information is stored, retrieved, understood, disseminated and remembered. Increasingly, information mediates between humans and reality. In this context, the activities of ordering, making sense, evaluating, navigating and acting upon information step onto the centre-stage of contemporary life, impinging upon skill profiles and personal choices. They often do so under conditions in which the established boundaries between individuals and institutions are rendered shifting and negotiable. — Jannis Kallinikos and Jose-Carlos Mariategui
Electroboutique
I heavily edited the original English translation of the manifesto for Roman and Alexei back in November, and so, here it is, as unveiled at Transmediale 08…
Electroboutique: Media Art 2.0
Today, when any critical artistic statement is drained of its power within the rigid frameworks of the unilateral capitalist world, a critical artist can no longer create while contemptuously looking down at commercial art and design that is governed exclusively by market laws.
At the same time as it becomes smarter and more refined, capitalism intrudes into most revolutionary, autonomous, and secluded areas of human activity. This is not to suggest that avant-garde art creation always stood in opposition to capitalism. The modernists, taking part in the evolution of design, worked in factories developing furniture and fabrics in order to bring art to the masses. Parallel to the evolution of Dada, the ready-made, and later, pop art, the theory and philosophy of art and culture contemplated the balance between the poles of capitalism and art, unique and mass-produced objects, high and low culture, professional and amateur, practical and dysfunctional. As the newest weapon of capitalism, information technologies dictate new social and cultural contexts and within these, uncover new challenges.
Our answer to the dilemma: Media Art 2.0
more “Electroboutique”
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