posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

should

Caught on radar a couple days ago:

“Should is the killer word in the English language.” Tobias Wolff quoting Michel Herr in conversation with George Saunders last evening, three authors. Should I explore this? Should I try writing about it? Nah. Another day. But it was nice seeing George on screen, an aside to our ether-mediated text trading of the last decades.

Morning comes and writing, any writing, needs to happen to both purge and to temporarily preserve what is left of Life. (While acknowledging that there is no craft available here to draw on, only a poorly exercised habit of projecting symbolic detritus from mind to screen: excretion.)

Okay, the should problem. One obstacle set oblique to it: the close-to-asymptotic barrier in writing truth. Especially when the perception of weakness arrives in view when attempting to write such. Why is this? Is it that behind any truth is the reified presence of mortality? Photographer Richard Misrach comes to mind, describing his impression of the desert as having a ‘terrible beauty.’ It is within the verity of instantaneous sensual engagement with the world we subsequently come to know that we are transitory. This initiates a deep terror: the only escape from which is a return into the ongoing flow of the senses receiving the source of that terrible beauty. It is the process of reification, fixing the image, that is the initial corruption of truth. Writing that approaches truth is writing that is sourced in the precognitive, the pre-rational, the pre-symbolic: the momentary encounter committed to page with a crafted or spontaneous urgency. Should is the reified abstraction of Life.

I should try to transcend this limit. I really should: Black speck on the wall. A fly. No compunction to snuff a life with dried and calloused hands made so after cleaning thousands of tiny fly-shits on surfaces, no, on edges around the house. Yes, insects excrete. And, yes, they habituate certain places for this: edges, corners, windows, shitting, tiny rust-red circles, a couple millimeters in diameter. I should cease writing and continue cleaning the house. Were that I was a fly on the wall, I should take a shit as well. Should write, should shit, should clean. This is how life goes.

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

a voice in the dark

Starting out from the house for a hike up the mountain a bit late, dayLight fading, but body needs cardio. Up the social trail, steep, and, yes, plenty of hurried heartbeats. Find a new cliff to balance on for a time, simple yogic methodology of grounding the self on rock, on the Earth.

I observe another hiker coming down the trail. I am squatting, still, silent, malasana, on granite thirty feet away in the twiLight, dressed mostly in black, he does not notice me.

On the way back down, it’s getting darker fast, by the time I get back to the trailhead walking requires singular concentration on vision.

I see that there is a car parked at the dead end on the open-space boundary. I can barely sense that the trunk is open, a cooler propped up next to the car, and a person sitting on the tailgate. I pass by, some distance away.

“hey”

“Hey!”

“Hey!!”

“Do you live here?”

At first I thought he was talking to a pet or so. I stop and turn, “Yes.” He is walking quickly towards me. Mind makes calculations: how close will I allow him to get? He stops maybe ten feet away. Face indistinct, he seems old (so am I).

“I don’t own a phone, or a computer, and I’m not on FaceBook, that tells you something about me.”

“That’s okay, actually that’s great” I reply as he abruptly turns and walks back into the murk. I turn and continue walking home, passing two dog-walkers. To one I say nothing, to the other I say “Good evening,” and receive an inaudible reply.

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

where are we now?

Turbulence, chaos, confusion, extremity, consumption, inequality, decadence, decline, destruction.

What else is new? Are we sliding towards a self-induced eco-catastrophe or simply ‘evolving’ as a species? Are we, with our presumed intelligence and altruism, any greater than one singular expression of Life on this particular planet? Does Life deserve to be considered ‘special’? Or is it merely the way the cosmos (comes and) goes? Or is it all and everything?

What is to be made of the juxtaposition of science and spirit. Is spirit anything to construct a life around? Should spirit be considered when embodied and lived memory is so blinded and transitory? How is it possible to think of eternity when the immediacy of daily stress erases all dreams?

Do we misapprehend all the natures of ‘reality’? As we position ourselves, solid backs against solid walls: walls and backs that we assume are things to press against each other. The conundrum of ‘thing-ness’ a cruel lie in itself, over-arching our transitory nature. Dust unto dust. Any wall crumbles into, what?

Questions accumulate as life winds down into another fall, then winter: one future, spring in another place. Possibly. If fear can be eradicated from body-system. And the numbers look good.

And in mind, only jumbled fragments, nothing to hold to. Nothing to allow as meaningful, no construction of temporary artful expressions, nothing to bring fire to be-ing. Human encounters become so occasional, so distant outside of ‘work’, that they have no effect. Memory retains no imprint. Equinox brings no balance.

Death stalks Barcelona. Anthony goes silent. Thoughts wander to ancient Western road-trips: Death, and the many lively times sharing a space with him in Boulder. No word from Maite, she must be suffering terribly. Remote presence shows its cruel side, that mediated distance is not bridged.

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

Application: Field_Notes – The Heavens

Application to the BioArt Society Field_Notes workshop:

A native of Alaska, Dr. Hopkins is an international media artist. He holds a creative practices PhD in media studies from University of Technology Sydney and La Trobe University; an MFA from CU-Boulder (where he studied film with renown experimental film-maker, Stan Brakhage); and a BS in geophysical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. His trans-disciplinary research and workshops explore issues surrounding sustainable creative systems, distributed and community-based DIY processes, and developing empowered approaches to technology. His creative practice explores the role of energy in global techno-social systems and the effects of technology on energized human encounter through performance, image and sound work, and writing. He has taught across more than twenty countries. He is currently working as an editor and information specialist at the Colorado Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado. Traces of his praxis may be found at https://tech-no-mad.net/blog/.

(1) SECOND ORDER group – With a fundamental interest in the process of information and knowledge transfer, especially in the context of deepening public engagement in science, I find the idea of (critical) second-order observation compelling. In this Gaian moment, the creative engagement of art/sci (research) practices is of great importance. The precise processes by which they are informed and disseminated – through a synthesis of engaged human encounter and dialogue, intense and centered (even meditative) observation, along with the impact of empirical information sources — is an important object of inquiry. Previous workshops I’ve led have explored the meta-structures of participatory creative action and their relationship with energy/life.

(2) HAB group – My sound/camera-based work is not about product, but rather rooted directly in the meditative mind-state of the observer, being especially aware that the “observer changes that which is observed.” Watching the sky is a daily process for me.

I contribute in two ways: listening to the Other’s stories, and sharing stories from my own experience. I hold a philosophy that says in open exchange/dialogue between the Self and the Other, there is a powerful third energy source that arises which may subsequently be tapped into as a source for creative action. Having lived as an expatriate for most of my life, I have a deep sensitivity to cross/trans-cultural communication and collaboration. This I have demonstrated facilitating and participating in transdisciplinary workshops/residencies around the Baltic Region. That and my significant background in the science and environmental/geosciences specifically will add to the collective knowledge-base. I am an experienced field researcher, and traveler, and I bring a wide on-the-ground experience with Arctic, high-altitude, desert, and arid ecosystems. My personal creative arts/media praxis is multi-disciplinary and I enjoy engaging with other practitioners about the textures of their practices.

CLUI residency — Energy of Situation


https://neoscenes.net/blog/category/project/clui-residency

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

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

muse?

Musing about a muse: brings the indeterminate back directly into life, though the effect is, by nature, disturbing to any pre-established [dynamic] equilibrium. Was there ever any in life thus far? Then there are the simple images that arise from encounter, a hand, a shoulder, a torso, seen best in the resonant allowance to look beyond, through, and simply at the sanctioned. Life transitions from dry-throated mental rasp to fluid inflected neural fire — no pleural effusion — but simply the life-lubricating properties of water re-entering the body. For the thirsty, this is eau de source. Catalysis of seen and unseen, spoken and unspoken things brings conflagration to the chakras. But who needs overheated chakras? Burning up life is not really something needed when it burns up, readily fast. Energies may be bound up with lived presence, while life depends upon an unleashing of those same energies. Élan vital. It’s the unleashing that is the source of most anxiety. Pent-up energies traveling along the well-worn pathways of former be-ing end up re-circulating ad nauseum, subsequently causing pathologies in the embodied system. Stressed, sparking contact needs to find flow pathways that are … open … or needs to make openings, spontaneously. for survival.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

a very raw pedagogic generality

My international undergraduate and graduate students would often critically challenge/engage me on the content of whatever I was presenting, as well as (sometimes) even the form of the pedagogic encounter [all this tempered on occasion with excessive deference for the ‘professor’]. I learned a lot from them.

To begin with, my Amurikan students would frequently challenge me as to why should they have to extend any effort to learn; who was I to tell them what to do; and why should they be required show up at all to the pedagogic encounter; it was rare to have the fruits of a critical thought process emerge in what passed for (stultifyingly obtuse) discourse anchored firmly in cryptic language usage (think Palin) and pop media snippets (think any form of advertising being passed on as ‘information’).

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

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.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

You’re born, you start crawling

You’re born, you start crawling, then you stand up and walk. But you have to live upright, not just walk upright, you have to live upright.

So says Alex, a Russian/Moldavian/Polish/Jewish metal fabricator that I will talk to in front of his open garage for some time.

I had a flat tire on my bike — the one time I go out on some errands without my pump. I had stopped to make some ambient recordings on the way home, and during the third stop, when I was done, I started to get on the bike and the rear tire was dead flat. This, two miles from home. So, start walking and after a long time, as I get close to home, I hear a whistle which I ignore. It goes again, a shrill whistle, so I look in the direction, across the street a man is gesturing me to come over. So, I do. A conversation ensues and ends with the above statement after a half-hour. We discover that yet again, my inner-tube has sheared at the stem, annoying. With no fix accomplished despite Alex digging up a new valve, conversation turns to his history — as a “master mechanic, welder, and fabricator” he worked in the oil biz in Siberia and elsewhere. Long stories. I am invited back for a beer and a longer conversation. I will do this, with camera and recorder. Another interesting encounter in Prescott.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

learning? teaching?

To really gain from an educational, learning encounter, one needs to be in dialogue with the person one is communicating/learning with. Roles may be played (i.e., ‘student’ – ‘teacher’) but whatever the case, it has to be a dialogue, not a sequence of monologs, not bound by fear to a strict set of social protocols, not a call-and-response between priest and supplicant: it has to adapt to the contingency of knowledge differentials between the two. Everyone should be learning within the encounter. At its foundation, it needs to be an open exchange, filling in the open spaces that are hollowed (hallowed!?) by ignorance.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

dense artistic information

The artistic text, as we have ascertained, may be viewed as a specially organized mechanism which can contain an exceptionally high concentration of information. If we compare a sentence of colloquial speech with a poem, a set of paints with a picture, or a scale with a fugue, we immediately realize that the second element of each pair can contain, store, and convey a volume of information that is beyond the capacity of the first element.

Our conclusions are in full agreement with the fundamental idea of information theory which states that the volume of information in a message should be seen as the function of the number of possible alternative messages. The structure of an artistic text has a practically infinite number of boundaries which divide this text into segments that are equivalent in certain respects, and consequently may be regarded as alternatives. more “dense artistic information”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

the best

The best stories I have heard were pointless, the best books those whose plot I can never remember, the best individuals those whom I never get anywhere with. Though it has been practised on me time and again I never cease to marvel how it happens that with certain individuals whom I know, within a few minutes after greeting them we are embarked on an endless voyage comparable in feeling and trajectory only to the deep middle dream which the practised dreamer slips into like a bone slips into its sockets.

Miller, H., 1958. The Colossus of Maroussi, New York, NY: New Directions Books.
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  • place: en route Berlin-Prenzelauerburg - Köln - Aachen, Germany

big synchronicity

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

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

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

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

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

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

across the great divide

We are constructed by those who came before: just witness our behavior, how it links back and back into the bright and dark ages of the world. We carry the patterns of life that have already come and gone, but at the same time, they persist and persist in unchanging variation. This is how it is, this is how it goes. This is what proceeds:

Body is vibrating, deeply resonant. Trembling with the anticipation of what is not known in the next second, what might befall, what has already fallen into the arms of others. A shrug of the shoulders, again, and what is left is the sternum forward, the heart wide open, wide open to the airs and to the fluctuations of presence. The heart feels, directly, the proximal Other.

Then, it’s late, it’s arm-in-arm. Left, crooked to catch hers, left hand stuck in right sleeve so that it doesn’t feel tense, holding it up in the air. Then finally, later, holding her warm hand in a slightly cooler one: thermal gradient—does this mean that I am sapping her energy? In a closed system, yes it would. In an open system, lucid nights, in the city spring-Lighted night, thousands are testing their compatibility ranking for re-creation of permuted life. Life energy is being traded through many passions, along many pathways. We are only two of many, on pathways that cross in one way or another. Is this it? Or is there some other awareness emblazoned secretly within our energized selves for us to be more than what we appear to be, more than what we feel? Walking the perimeter of Töölönlahti in the white twiLight, there is no water, there is no sky, there is only The Void and the blackbird singing. Life goes on.

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essay-grading software

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/science/new-test-for-computers-grading-essays-at-college-level.html

Brian Holmes, who runs “Continental Drift” responded to that article on AI grading of college essays as follows:

> The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short
> written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.

Such as:
a. raw domination
b. rank servitude
c. outright revolution

[Note: You can only tick one of the boxes…]

LOL Brian! (with significant sighing on the side) — just finished a class this morning talking with my students about this very issue … (c) will occur at the interstice of the human encounter of Self with Other, so that it is indeed available instantly, all around, in the classroom, in faculty meetings, on the street. Reminding the students of this (and helping them establish a lived praxis based on the vitality of those encounters) is my choice, so that suggests changing (c) to ‘facilitating open encounter and engagement’…

The only future I can see beyond submission to the economic destinies of robotization and outsourcing is some kind of political organization, my friends. To be sure, the 60s, reinterpreted and repurposed by neoliberal ideology, trained us all against any kind of hierarchy whatsoever. We are so “free” that power is walking all over us. The capitalist democracies have gone down the very path predicted by Weberian sociology: complete rationalization for accumulation’s sake. The university is now envisioned as a largely automated service provider for the human-capital needs of corporations. That’s endgame, because without a public institution for critical perception, analysis and deliberation, the only social steering mechanism is the imperative to accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, until the last ton of coal is effectively burnt and we’re all reduced to a cinder. Isn’t that kinda obvious now? What’s the next step?

At this point I am quite pessimistic that the evolutionary drive to guarantee propagation of the species, a drive inseparable from life itself, and which includes the need for consuming any and all energy necessary for survival-to-reproduce, can be short-circuited by any altruistic or even pragmatic socio-political (community, nation-state, supra-national) agendas, ever. The social concept of ‘use less’ (promulgated mostly by the ever-unsatiated über-consumers of the developed world) cannot trump evolutionary hard-wiring. I believe we will do exactly as you say at the end of your paragraph.

That question of what to do next, now, is perhaps moot. The question of what to do, after, will present itself in the immediacy of the moment. The situation we as a species have made is not of such extremity to preclude that life in other forms will not continue, and our species will likely exist in greatly reduced numbers. This may simply provide the planet with other opportunities to re-evolve after (solar-sourced) energy has again been accumulated to a level and form that allows for another burst of life progression.

This will clearly not happen in the short term of (our) human life-times.

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Deep Resonant Networking panel

How do you know when something or someone is affecting you?

There are many ways of describing or modeling the dynamics of human encounter and collaborative relationship. The concept of resonance is a powerful tool for understanding the qualities that relate us to each other and to the world. Resonance is an intuitive (pre-)cognition where something, “when stimulated, spontaneously responds according to the natural guidelines on the particular phases of vital energy engendered in itself and active in the situation.”[1] Resonance is a ‘natural’ extension of a creative praxis: “Resonance allows the universe (or any of its parts) to influence a human being”.[2] One intention in creative collaboration, given that “[t]hings ‘energize’ each other,” is to propagate a resonance between the Self and the Other. While this is a very uncertain undertaking, it is one that in any instance has almost unlimited potentials.

This panel seeks to open a space for sharing and exploring experiences of resonance while helping define what it might mean to rely on such an intuitive feeling. In the context of the Bricolabs network, differences — location, culture, language, social background, and others — that are the realities of distributed creative action, often seen otherwise as divisive challenges, are overcome through ways of relating that transcend surface materialism. This transcendence might be framed as a deep resonant networking where energized participants establish trusting relationships based on a more ethereal vibe: maybe it’s about mojo! Join the conversation and let’s see if we find some resonant frequencies on which to groove.

[1] Roth, H.D., 1991. Psychology and Self-Cultivation in Early Taoistic Thought. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 51(2), pp.599-650.
[2] Kaptchuk, T.J., 2000. The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

a little bit

Yup, a little bit of personality disorder will go a long way to stir things up in the idiosyncrasy department! Last evening, completely choking on creative output. It’s gotten to be too much of a predictable process. When not “out there” i.e., when ‘stuck’ in a single location, working at a jay-oh-bee, creative impulses narrow significantly. Acquisition of material becomes a spotty and herky-jerky affair. Squeezing bits of expression out during rare interludes. Oh, got a day ‘off’? Gonna work. Gotta work. With potential dislocation to Europe looming, only 3.5 months away or so. I only wish that the Brico/Pixelache project was two weeks later. It’s going to be a stress to get packed up, moved out, and on a plane in time to get to Helsinki by the 16th of May. Then, what to do after that — head first to Kiel, then to Koln and NRW, and then to Berlin and on to Lithuania if that works out. Then back to the US for long enough to tour a bit and then use the fall to hunt for a post-doc position in Europe. or Asia.

The Singapore gigs look interesting, but hmmm, that’s a whole ‘nother world! Have to research it a bit more. Back to the idiosyncrasy issue — this will make the search for a living venue all the more difficult. So far nothing has come along except at the microscopic level of individual encounters with Others, and the energized dances/dialogues that occur as the kernel of those encounters.

And another Brakhage Salon (“Celebrating Stan”) screening last night courtesy of Saranjan Ganguly who has continued the salons that Stan began years ago. It’s ten years since he passed now.

Spring Cycle, 1995

Visions in Meditation, #3, Plato’s Cave, 1990

Commingled Containers, 1997

Thot Fal’n, 1978

The Lion and Zebra Make God’s Raw Jewels, 1999

23rd Psalm Branch Part 1, 1966

Talk of passing, former inspiration, I wonder what Freshman film student Tara thinks about the grey-heads talking about a fallen giant. The works are mostly fine to see, several I’d not seen before.

There is a Brakhage Symposium happening in March that I will participate in, as usual, not on the official bill, but rather as professional (and rather unique) participant. Former student of Stan’s, colleague, and the guy who got him a custom knit Icelandic sweater!

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Dialogue and Learning

My educational philosophy is built on the existence of a simple phenomena that I observe on a daily basis while moving through life. It is this — where two people can come together and have an encounter. If this encounter is at least somewhat free of conventional social strictures, and the two individuals are able to find an open path for the sharing of their life-times and energies, there arises a special situation. Following this encounter the two might step away from this encounter, both are inspired, both with an excess of energy circulating within themselves, both at a higher energy level than when they arrived an the instance of the encounter.

It is this excess of energy arising from the situation that becomes a source of creative action.

This is a fundamental in learning: To face the unknown Other, to find an open pathway for an exchange of energies, and experience the potential of energy exchange.

The degree of openness in the encounter is heavily influenced by the techno-social system that the two individuals are embedded within and the meta-conditions of their encounter.

Moving away to a wider perspective, a classroom is a multiplicity of these dialogues that have the potential to generate absolutely relevant knowledge and experience sets for/among all participants in the encounter process.

As an educator and facilitator, it is my role to change the characteristic of the space/conditions for the encounter such that there are more possibilities for it to find or create open pathways. One primary task is to be aware of and push back at least a subset of the imposed social relations/protocols that govern the encounter in order to uncover possible alternative pathways for creative collaboration.

posted
  • place: Arvada, Colorado

back to presence

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

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

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  • place: Arvada, Colorado

revolution?

For revolutionary educators, knowledge exceeds its semiotic end products; it travels intertextually within demarcated systems of intelligibility. Critical knowledge is understood as persistently open, disclosive, incomplete, and open-ended. In this way it remains cautious in the presence of reified social relations and epistemological distortions that occlude the social ontology of knowledge and its processual journey from fact to value. In other words, critical epistemological practice examines not only the content of knowledge, but also its method of production. It seeks to understand how ideological constructions are encoded and administered, how metonymic and synecdochical gestures are performed so as to obscure relations of domination and oppression, how the interpretive and interpellative frameworks by which we organize our sentiments construct ruling stereotypes, and how the governing categories of our everyday discourse render invisible and obscure real social relations of exploitation. — (McLaren, P., 2001. Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Politics of Hope: Reclaiming Critical Pedagogy. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies.)

Aside from the monumental use of academic blah-blah-blah here, the idea behind the obscurity is valid. That is, a radical approach to the facilitation of transformative learning requires a deep awareness of more than just a subject. It demands an awareness of how an embodied knowledge of that subject is founded or generated or discovered. This “how” is in many cases far more important than the “what” of knowledge. I describe this “how” as the meta-structures under which the learning is undertaken. It can be a material issue — bricks-and-mortar, the architectural setting — but also, consequent to an energy-based worldview, it is also a critical question of the entire set of flows within which the encounter is taking place. This is far, far more than opening a classroom window for fresh air, or sitting under a tree with a group of students, although the change in the energy ‘content’ of the situation can be quite profoundly altered by small actions on or reactions to the locale. An energy perception drives much deeper into the meta-structures than that, although any awareness is a good starting point. Because the energy content of the situation is most profoundly affected by the presence of the Self and the Others, the entire energy dynamic among participants must also receive this attention and care. This dynamic is more fundamental than ‘merely’ the social — it is expressed in my concept of continuum-of-relation, defined as the total accumulated network of relations, expressed as activated exchanges of energy, as Dialogues, that have occurred, are occurring, and will occur between members of the species. A holistic awareness of this continuum is necessary to optimize the facilitation.

No revolution is possible among people using language as per McLaren!

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conversation

Listening does not mean waiting impatiently, while someone else speaks of things that do not concern you: it means sympathetically identifying yourself with the speaker, his background, his desires, his troubles, understanding them as much as possible, and tactfully suggesting outside points of view, not too alien to his own, which may aid him in whatever problem is being uttered.

Matters of interest only to yourself are never proper subjects of more than passing reference.

Whatever your theme, be good humored. If you can sprinkle wit and humor into your conversation, you disarm almost any ill feeling on the part of others in the group. For laughter, it must be remembered, releases our prejudices. — Lloyd Smith

This advice floats on a surface of socialized presence. Slightly pithy, gendered, with a dated language that suggests quaint and formal relations of the past. Where are we now, in the swirling, mediated, media-saturated present? The opportunity for concentrated face-to-face dialogue seems almost as quaint, though along with the quaintness there is an explicit loss, somewhere behind the fractured and discontinuous surface of modern communications.

Could this explicit loss be the source of a growing and extremely deep angst that underlies wide-spread (and expanding) social insecurity? That the implied dis-connect between a world of hyper-socialization and the world we happen to be within and part of gives rise to …

blah blah blah …

posted
  • place: Whanganui, New Zealand

endings – Day 11 – eNZed

Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

I join the panel Social Energy with Zita Joyce, Caro McCaw, and Sally McIntyre along with a Skype from Eric (Kluitenberg) from late nite NL, half-way around the globe. It’s funny to cross paths with him here, but appropriate in the sense of the networking practice.

There was one point in his presentation that I had a serious disagreement with — when he posited that the remote half of a connection (in this case, a tele-presence ‘wall’ in a working environment), was ‘fantasy’ in the sense that it wasn’t ‘real.’ If I understood this correctly, I would totally disagree. It is rather a situation of sensory attenuation — the ‘presence’ of the remote Other is real, but attenuated (by the communications protocols between here and there). And it is in this attenuation where the loss and alienation from remoteness (and ultimately the frequent dysfunction of online events like ElectroSmog) arises. We didn’t get into it too far as there were other issues to talk about in the panel, but this one really was problematic. When assigning a ‘fantastical’ label to a real techno-social deployment we remove any (human) agency from it and push it into a phenomenal realm where it does not rightly fit. What is implemented is an expression of a human techno-social system — manifestations of this system are never fantasy.

Many good presentations, especially the comments from Mike Poa, the founder of the One River project with the waka on the Whanganui River. It’s hard to hear of yet another river suffering from the typical exploitation/development which ends up wasting the life of the entire watershed and its people. But then the efforts to revive the river culture seem to be pretty successful. The Maori are by no means quitters, and their cultural strength is significant. A couple days ago I spent part of an afternoon talking with a group of Maori women who were reviving/continuing the tradition of weaving baskets, they said that there was a very positive engagement from the young people.

It’s over, so, cleaning up the space and trucking everything back to the Green Bench or the house at the end of the afternoon.

The day closes with another delicious barbie at Don and Ana’s place, with the slow and mild twiLight falling.

Can’t wait to get another dose of NZ!

posted
  • place: Whanganui, New Zealand

Day 3 – eNZed

a perspective on the barbecue, Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

check out the town farmer’s market before noon, it has a good assortment of food and such. Julian picks up a remote-control-helicopter for the girls (well, ostensibly for them!). back at the house everyone gets a chance to fly it until it dies an unceremonious death. an afternoon swim in the Quaker compound pool is refreshing.

barbecue in the evening, more great food, energized dialogues, tough queries: What are you going to do at this workshop? Ahh, ummm, it’s a long story… got a few minutes?

New Zealand is very fine. The dialogues with Julian and others range all over the place. Hanging around with the rest of the family, along with friend’s of Sophie’s who are on an extended sabbatical from Denmark is stimulating with a healthy dose of good humor. And, with plenty of kids around, well, that keeps the proceedings well-grounded.

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  • place: Whanganui, New Zealand

The Green Bench – Day 2 – eNZed

opening, The Greenbench, Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

Today is completely packed and busy: cleaning, organizing, and installing the show at the Greenbench for the gallery opening this evening. The title of the show is BURN and the show is obliquely or directly about hydrocarbons — plastics, production, consumption, distribution. Julian had tracked down a collection of oil samples from an early and now spent New Zealand (oil) field nearby (name?). I am surprised, oil — with the tectonic regime here, the foreshore of a plate boundary subduction zone. Ah, maybe the heat flow is actually lower when considering that because the immediate crust is double thickness with the subducting plate, so there is a lower heat gradient from the mantle. Shallow oil, guess I’d never thought of the genesis of such plays.

I use embodied energy to organize and clean the gallery kitchen for the opening, along with having numerous conversations with folks introduced from Julian’s extensive local network. He asks me if I will talk at the opening sharing some anecdotes about working in the oil business. Completely impromptu, though I had a minute to sit with a piece of paper before and write a five- or six-point list of things to remember to talk about. I am not the best story-teller, especially in such a situation, but folks politely listen to a few minutes of my rambling.

Later in the evening, raucous preparations over wine precede delicious dinner back at the house. Definitely some good cooks around!

The question for me becomes — how to keep track of the dialogues, and the warm humans encountered? Julian mentions there is an artist-residency possibility in town. It would be great to hang here for a time. Somehow, it reminds me distantly of Tornio, in Lapland, half-way ’round the world, literally, in the sense of it being a littoral backwater along a river in a small country, but the community here seems quite activated, and the differences between Finns/Lapps and Kiwis/Maori are complex and significant. Similarities do exist — it would be good to have the time to explore. It looks like there will not be any spare time in these 11 days for much autonomous explorations, although this is okay, as the people immediately surrounding Julian and Sophie’s lives provide a rich environment for encounter. And a site for the exchange of inspiration.

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Free empty hands

Hand in hand with equal plod they go. In the free hands — no. Free empty hands. Back turned both bowed with equal plod they go. The child hand raised to reach the holding hand. Hold the old holding hand. Hold and be held. Plod on and never recede. Slowly with never a pause plod on and never recede. Backs turned. Both bowed. Joined by held holding hands. Plod on as one. One shade. Another shade. — Samuel Beckett

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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”

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

pro-vocative

Serial Space, Ultimo, New South Wales, Australia, September 2010

over to Serial Space to meet Ian and see a screening of early works of his — tape-to-tape media collage works which work remarkably well, especially given their age. very interesting conversation ensues afterward with folks. a good sign of pro-vocative work.

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I and Thou

It is not possible to live in the bare present. Life would be quite consumed if precautions were not taken to subdue the present speedily and thoroughly. But it is possible to live in the bare past, indeed only in it may a life be organized. We only need to fill each moment with experiencing and using, and it ceases to burn. — Martin Buber

Buber, M., 1958. I and Thou, New York, NY: Scribner.

The rumbling classic of coming-to-be in the dynamic of encounter with the Other. Buber’s classic work is dense and difficult. Working through it is slow. It may take a month, or perhaps a year. Sentence by sentence, discovering resonant meaning. While preparing for the doctoral assessment arising in a couple week’s time. Strange to have actually bought a copy of I and Thou there in Portland, along with a new copy of Wilhelm’s I Ching. Nothing to be made of it except that mediated energies from the Other are felt, are compelling, and, in the end, are all we have. But does spirit need this mediation, or, as is framed in many systems, is it a task, a challenge, set to our hungry roving ghosts by something greater, or is it merely the nature of it all, of which we are a substantive part?

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  • place: Boulder, Colorado

group portrait, Craig’s woodworking class

group portrait, Craig's woodworking class, Lafayette, Colorado, June 2010

Pick up the kids over at the Alexander Dawson School, meeting Craig Angus, their teacher for a wood-working course. Craig is a former student from my first years of teaching Master Black and White Printing at CU waaay back in the 1980s. He’s now the teacher with the most seniority at Dawson!

The kids made some pretty fine bedside table/cabinets that were still wet with polyurethane. Fortunately I had room in the truck to stash them safely for the ride home to Boulder.

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  • place: en route Boulder, Colorado - Portland, Oregon

the past, now

brunch with Homare, Denver, Colorado, May 2010

Brunch with Homare, years have passed since we crossed paths, how that goes. He and his wife have moved into a really nice place right off of CR 36 in Denver. Then back to Boulder to catch the airport bus to DIA and on to Portland. Erica picks me up in her scrubs, straight from the hospital. I haven’t seen her for, what, a decade? Back to her place where she makes dinner for her boyfriend Greg, and myself. I had forgotten she had a catering business in the long-ago past. Between geology and cardio-vascular surgery. Sheesh, have some more wine.

posted
  • place: Glade Park, Colorado

yurt foundation

heavy equipment on Rock Ridge Lane, Glade Park, Colorado, May 2010

Up early on a gorgeous late spring day to finish preparations on the yurt platform which overlooks a beautiful slice of one of the two canyons on the east and west sides of their lot. The actual raising of the yurt won’t be until next month (stay tuned!), but Collin and Marisa will be away on one of their guided flights to Alaska in the interim. Friends, including their neighbor, Bob, lend a hand for the long, hard day of work, but it’s all relaxed and with lots of good humor. PBR’s temper the late afternoon heat. Work continues until after dark with a quick polyurethaning of the all the lower bender boards while Bob and his wife make a hearty hamburger dinner. Good times!

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

another spadeful of encounter

In the contemporary framework of human encounter—dominated by instances of hyper-commerce and of tele-mediated presence—life changes to fit the mediation (it does not evolve in the same sense that Darwin’s idea of the process; instead it simply fits the technology), and the character of encounter with(in) life alters for each shift in the techno-social milieu that collectively generates the allowed pathways of exchange.

Freedom is not a question in this situation. Nor is autonomy. Those are absolutes of the abstract: virginal conceptions not directly related to the contingencies of be-ing in and of the world. Absolutes and abstractions do not prepare the Self for the shifting potentialities of collective human encounter which proceed by degree and layered complexity. And indeed, when abstractions govern encounter, the full field of possibility of human encounter is quickly limited to a less-than-finite set of conditions, processes, and outcomes. There arises the alienation of emotive loss in this limitation, but that is another issue to raise elsewhere. Or perhaps this alienation is the reciprocal experience of the (unfulfilled) possibilities of creative encounter.

Or is all this just about losing or gaining procreative (evolutionary) advantage for the species (via technological augmentation), and nothing more?

The fact that the strongest, most beautiful, most intelligent are, overall, given social reward when compared to the least. (Recognizing this, the revolutionary community organizer, Jesus, said (as interpolated by Mathew) “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” to invert the perception of this evolutionary order, and the alternative fact that following his lead will actually alter the order. Was this a miraculous strike at limited potentialities? Or mere agitprop for political expediency?

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movement and encounter

Morning, mourning notes on encounter, in no particular order.

It is on a pathway, the pathway, in the mode of movement, in the shifting of unknown situations, where encounter occurs. These encounters are traced with the full presence of the body and all aspects where they occur.

There is the general rule on a hiking trail, uphill gets right-of-way: those struggling and straining to make it to the top of whatever heights that you’ve just been on should be given precedence. It’s always a question, though, what the precise character of the encounter will be. Whether you have seen (or heard) the approach of an Other, through dense forest, or whether you round a turn to be confronted by a gaggle of silent walkers. Encounter is a culturally specific regime overlying that of the embodied, the animal. On trails in the West the density of hikers is generally low, except in National Parks which can see crowds as dense any on Fifth Avenue in New York City at lunch-time. This is one criteria on which to judge a trail — not merely the views afforded, but the number of people encountered. Escaping from human presence is as prominent a thought as what other ‘natural’ phenomena might be encountered. more “movement and encounter”

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  • place: en route Millers Point - Ultimo, NSW, Australia

George Street

the bus, locus of social interaction of various and sundry sorts, going from Millers Point to the office. great for people watching (and interacting with), exhausting when the saturation point of sensory energy input is reached.

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  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

(in) no time

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

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

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

many impressions, no time

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

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  • place: Millers Point, NSW, Australia

eminence, prominence

out the door, down the street. up the hill.

Monty, an amateur astronomer working for the Sydney Observatory 100 meters down the road and up the hill, has a hydrogen-band-filtered spotting scope for solar observations set up next to a bench on the lawn. the face of the sun is clean, as it has been for some time during this extra minimal solar minimum. at three o’clock, though, there is a small and ethereal (plasmatic!) prominence rising perhaps ten percent of a solar diameter from the edge of the reddish shimmering disk. choice thing to see. along with the view from the hill.

posted
  • place: Marrickville, NSW, Australia

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.

posted
  • place: en route Prescott - Phoenix, Arizona - SFO - Marrickville, New South Wales

launched

landed. routine flight. slept for a good portion of the 14 hours. sat next to an interesting woman, Shar, writing for The Epoch Times in Sydney and New York.

posted
  • place: Dewey, Arizona

dinner

deLightful dinner with the Dewey gals, nice to meet Kaolin after 18 years or so, and to meet Emery after the same. an after-dinner twiLight walk is shockingly intersected by a coiled rattler or so. my foot was only a meter away and ready to swing that direction. not a good place to plant the Self. the twiLight was dense enough that there was some doubt as to the reality of rattler-ness, no rattles were sounded and we didn’t press our luck. ‘nuf said.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

another 50th

I stick around for Chris’ 50th as his folks, John and Barbara, also come into town on their way between Iowa and Tucson. nice to catch up with them. Barbara reminds me about her chocolate-chip cookies when she mentions she doesn’t have any with her. this references the care packages she would send to Chris when he and I were room-mates back at 148 Washington in Golden — she would usually include a tin of her fabulous cookies which Chris would share generously. got to snag the recipe someday. or, film her making them.

all this visiting. catching up. exploring territories. hearing stories. mapping out lives. recitations, prognostications on weather and politics and social systems. sampling lives. and seeing time pass forwards inexorably.

keeping up appearances (the cost of social participation), requires energy. energy paid into the system. (was this the lament of the Man?) versus what? appearing as The Self is and allowing for personal idiosyncrasy, proceed with no particular thought as to impact, just to channel what comes in life.

Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART … EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who — from his state of freedom — the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand — learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER. — Joseph Beuys

posted
  • place: Pueblo, Colorado

coffee table

whups have to get a photo up for this, to be sure. I head south from Manitou to spend a day with Bill in Pueblo, after meeting for breakfast, we pick up the coffee table that he made for me from the wood that came from my childhood home in Clarksburg, Maryland. there was a sizable Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) tree next to an old barn. the tree wasn’t healthy and so my father wanted to remove it — a process that I helped with, digging down in some places more than six feet to the roots and cutting them until he was able to pull the entire tree down with the Willys Jeep and a block-and-tackle. after sectioning the main trunk with a chain saw, he had a guy come and take the sections to a lumber mill where it was cut into rough planks which were stacked for drying and eventually were transported to Arizona where they sat for all of 25 years. since Bill was doing some pretty high-end furniture-making, I got the idea of having him make a modest-sized and simple coffee table which he did do from the remaining wood, leaving only toothpicks leftover, as he said. it’s a beautiful table.

so, next on the day’s agenda was a road trip into the Wet Mountains west of Pueblo. living up to their name, we were in fog and rain much of the way up to Isabel Lake and the cloud cover really never broke the entire day. dinner at Puukaow Thai and meeting with Gan and Tassanee. then back north to Greg’s for a couple days of work.

posted
  • place: Florissant, Colorado

behind Cripple Creek

so, what about now? the then, constructed from fragments of fleshy and amorphous silica memory remains. it stands in each accretionary flow of now as a splinter of … glass … that distracts with an acute and heart-shimmering intrusion deep into souls that only somewhere wish to be there, then. speaking to a screen, there is a deep form of silence that no intensity of dialogue might remove. it is not a meditative silence but rather a reverberatory one … in a glass house.

Karen is back home after her first trip to China, so she and Ron pick me up at Greg’s for an over-night at the cabin south of Florissant. beautiful place! a great dinner that Ron concocts. and fine company, neighbors. and the wet weather continues in one form or another. Pikes Peak gets plenty more snow above tree line.

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  • place: en route Fort Lupton - Manitou Springs, Colorado

breakfast burritos

after a breakfast burrito and a couple hours going through the GHS 1976 images at Todd’s to stir our memories, I head south from Fort Lupton to Manitou Springs slowly. pick up that roll of Tri-X film at Reed — the one that sat, undeveloped, for almost a decade. the last roll of black-and-white film shot before shifting to the Sony DCR-PC100 video camera. it turns out to be a full roll of images, and thankfully without fogging despite sub-optimal storage. will scan the mystery shots when I get back to Prescott shortly. I’ve no idea what they are of.

taking in the way on the way. road trip images and sounds. these days, I usually stop for scenes that I perhaps previously would have driven by while noting in head shoulda stopped. I figure these days that I should be making images to somehow — at least conceptually — counter-balance my use of hydrocarbons. that and simply extending the practice of image-making which is so habitual now it risks becoming a stale rather than a vivifying practice. documenting the West as I see it and as I transit the spaces. the faux-windmill-water-station in Ft. Lupton, a darkly amusing iceberg-tip of impending global water issues; the green space appropriately called Greenland; the B-52 bomber at the Air Force Academy looms in the midst of a gathering storm; and sounds that augment a feel for the place.

the weather is strange.

I chill in a cafe in Manitou, catching up on work. it closes, so I head across the street to The Keg Lounge, definitely a local bar and grill (with wifi!). normally I’m not too chatty in such a place, but started to talk to the bartender, and then a young (obviously military) guy comes up ordering some beers for his friends playing pool. turns out he and the friends are deploying to Afghanistan in three days, to some obscure valley in one of the hottest Taliban-contested areas. I believe, without any empirical evidence, that only those who serve at that boots-on-the-ground level in the military have any clue what war really is like. I certainly don’t. war is a black box that I can only assume is full of terrors that only the young are able to flexibly absorb and at least partially master. I buy them a round of drinks and talk with them for awhile. one fellow, an ancient 26-years-old, is on his fifth deployment. he was scheduled to have reconstructive knee surgery in June, but the Army canceled that in order to deploy him. he figures he’ll be crippled by the time his deployment is over. they routinely carry 130-pounds of gear under extremely harsh conditions. a couple of them are first-timers. they harbor a certain bravado, innocence, and apprehension. embodied. I can’t say the encounter made my day, but it felt right in the pit of the belly and in the heart. the War(s) are so invisible to all but those directly involved — War is the legacy of illegitimacy and the fanatic regime that started them.

Greg gets back in from Boulder later so we hang out with his girlfriend, catching up on the pathways taken in the last years gone. hang out in his funky flat on the top floor of the (national historic register) Nolon House including the distinctive round tower. then they are away until tomorrow…

posted
  • place: Mt. Princeton Hot Springs, Colorado

geothermal

Prof. Fred Henderson III of Mount Princeton Geothermal, LLC, meets us in the late morning (thank goodness!) for a briefing on the geothermal development that he is overseeing in the area. the ultimate goal is a heat-exchange/re-injection power plant based on several high-flow wells into the hot spot that drives the hot springs. he then takes us on a two-hour tour of the area mapping out the geological regime and sharing some of the development info for the geothermal prospect. the major problem in the valley (of Chalk Creek) is the complexity of property ownership and the density of residential development. this entire area is carved up in relatively small lots with homes and is a very desirable location, so people will fight any drilling, piping, whatever is necessary for the plant, this, knowing it is an alternative energy source which will offset some of the coal-fired electricity production that the West is so dependent on. the coal plant that supplies them with electricity is out of sight, though, and there are sure to be a minority who will resist anything remotely industrial in appearance while the mountains fade into the growing coal haze.

the last stop is at a recently completed well that officially has the highest recorded heat gradient in the state of Colorado. I do a portrait of Frank and his wife there, it’s on her property.

(noting that the Chalk Cliffs for which the canyon is named are not actually chalk but rather hydrothermally altered Precambrian granite which in places will crumble in the hand, while those unaltered are hard as … rock!)

after the tour, a last slow soak with those rust-e folks still left, then reluctantly descending from the mountains, in conversation.

posted
  • place: Denver, Colorado

DAM

head down to Denver to meet Jim and Dona for a trip to DAM. I also called Dave to come by as he’s a former employee of the museum where he worked as an installation manager. the art forms a backdrop for stories, reflections, and dialogue. after lunch we head over to the MCA for a walk-thru. I’d never been there and it turns out to be quite a nice space — the rooftop bar and garden has a nice vibe to it. then back to the house to check out some of Jim’s recent Director-based media installation projects. and more…

Trade ye no mere moneyed art — James Johnson

then on to an IMax theater to meet Sally and Montse for the new Star Trek movie which was not very good. ‘nuf said. busy day. sonic documentation to come some future day as with many more past days. never the time to do the processing of files. accumulating faster than processing, a common problem for an archivist. what about being more exclusive? to choke the acquisitions process down to a manageable level. or more aggressively carving out processing time each day? that would come at the expense of sleep, methinks.

posted
  • place: Paulden, Arizona

Verde Springs

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

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

iDC dregs

iDC list gets annoying and rewarding at the same time. but what of life spent on the keyboard? the topic is teaching… and the transition of the teacher into the link jockey.

sotto voce: While the offerings of IP_based networks seem unlimited, and in rhetoric, the superlative of unlimited is often applied, I think it is important to keep firmly in mind that it is not a space of unlimited knowledge nor is it a space of neutral knowledge. And, also, in this time, it is not a space of embodied experience aside from eyes absorbing statically-framed EM radiation, ears hearing sounds disconnected from their source, and fingers twitching across a very limited place. Not to mention underlying ideologies which accompany each form of mediated connection (largely invisible but very much real) — among others, that of consumption (extractive resources, electricity, and thus, the globe-spanning world that we exert irresponsible dominion over). In this regard, the (limited)vastness of that knowledge-space seems a bit tainted and out-of-touch perhaps. Expensive and consumptive. Exclusive, reductive, and reified. A teacher is a catalyst, and is one who, simply by being an Other we encounter in life, presents us with the unknown. If we trust that Other, a world opens up that was previously unknown, and (if) we (trust enough to) apprehend and engage it, it changes us, we learn. This unknown world is sourced in the entire comprehensible universe, and is available through that Other. These encounters may take place anywhere, anytime, and can be had ‘for free.’ We need only ‘pay’ the Other with our attention, our life-time, and life-energy. It seems that in our formal techno-social educational systems, these potential encounters with the Other are (being) replaced by more and more socially-standardized systems-of-relation (protocols, curricula, government mandates, abstracted monetary instruments) which seem ever more intrusive to and even suppressive of potential open encounters. This limits the creative potential of the outcome. The cumulative effect of this social hyper-formalization-of-encounter — because learning occurs precisely at the edge of knowing, not within the known — is that we look elsewhere for the dynamic of coming-to-be (learning) that keeps us alive and growing. To me this is the ultimate source of the loss of vitality that affects the Education World, a vitality that ultimately does not rest on technological mediation but on human encounter. Yes, human encounter is always mediated by the vast range of social protocols and tools, and learning encounters may happen within highly mediated (‘virtual’) spaces, but when we allow those encounters to slide continuously into more and more mediated spaces, the life-time available for less mediated human encounter shrinks. I think that this represents a wide loss to learning, education, community, and creative potential as it moves to extremes and forgets what it is predicated upon — the originary encounter between the Self and the Other.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

hipbone

Cross paths with a fellow BS‘er, Charles, who is based in nearby Cottonwood. Nice to have some high-quality f-2-f time at the Raven for the afternoon. Many interesting stories and thoughts emerge in the convocation.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
— William Butler Yeats