posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

stalling, re-starting

The Surface Creek property, Cedaredge, Colorado, June ©2023 hopkins/neoscenes.
The Surface Creek property, Cedaredge, Colorado, June ©2023 hopkins/neoscenes.

Creative output sputters and stalls in the face of tapering life energy, with far too many menial tasks absorbing the dregs. Future creative engagement requires that I relinquish this living situation and move on, sooner than later. Sure, the maintenance, ordering, and re-wilding process may be understood as creative in a wide, cosmological sense: a performative action affecting the state of the macrocosm. The amount of time siphoned off into property upkeep, along with the demands of the ‘regular’ j-o-b has precipitated a high level of social isolation—something that I’m not used to, and something that’s not good. Driving the maintenance desperation is an acute and currently unavoidable fear-of-the-future. Sheesh. The ratio of my embodied energy level to the overall entropy of the situation is in the negative orders-of-magnitude level.

e–::E(s) ≥ 10-5

With no capital to exploit in this terminally oligarchic nation, aside from whatever I can physically manipulate.

There is a limit to what I can do to ‘catch up’ on years of zero wealth accumulation in the stead of transnational creative engagement (aka, bottom-feeding). Options are limited, but success depends more on the vitality of will—closely allied with physical stamina these days—along a simple fearlessness to make it happen. Fear is so diffuse—and previously not a factor—that surely it can be overcome (again) with focused human engagement.

Plans are developing. The first is leaving full-time work-for-pay despite compromising long-term viability. The second is to liquidate the property. Optimizing it for resale will require maybe six dedicated months, maximum, before moving on. The real estate market will be in better stead next year, barring civil conflict or another irruption of the Gaian system. Expatriation now the first choice. The extremities of Babylon’s current incarnation—hardly imagined by even the most cynical internal critic, well-known to those looking on from the outside—are a grinding black hole.

I arrived at this working/living situation having prioritized human connection over a stable and lucrative career (in the extractives industry where I started, or elsewhere). Unlike a lot of folks who follow a specific, planned trajectory, honing their talents in a particular field, gaining seniority and capital, I bounced around. Partly to maintain face-to-face contact with a widely dispersed human network, but also to sustain a flexibility that allowed for spontaneous participation in particular creative situations appearing along the way. Some, once trusted, have decided to label that as opportunism. I’ll deal with that hurtful critique in another posting. My general trajectory, though, despite that label, in other ways, was a mistake even with the rich array of participatory experiences it brought me into. Prioritizing stability, the known, the familiar rhythms of regular and predictable employment (and cash flow), ensuring (insuring!) future viability: this is the leitmotif of survival in the capitalist system, the rewards for a reliable prole. I prioritized change, instability, serendipity, spontaneity, and am paying the price of that. The time value of the abstracted instrument of social viability—money—requires long-term dependence and living-for-the-future. Well, the future has arrived: viability and life is emphatically transitory, there’s only one go-round. As Richard Pryor extolled: “I don’t give a FUCK!”

And what of Art? and Creativity?

whispered:
It all started a 17th of January, one million years ago.
a man took a dry sponge and dropped it into a bucket full of water.
who that man was is not important.
he is dead, but art is alive.
I mean, let’s keep names out of this.
as I was saying, at about 10 o’clock, a 17th of January. one million
years ago, a man sat alone by the side of a running stream.
he thought to himself :
where do streams run to, and why?
meaning why do they run.
or why do they run where they run.
that sort of thing.
personally, once I observed a baker at work.
then a blacksmith and a shoemaker.
at work.
and I noticed that the use of water was essential to their work.
but perhaps what I have noticed is not important.
normal voice:
anyway the 17th goes into the 18th
then the 19th then the 20th
the 21st the 22d the 23d the 24th the 25th the 26th the 27th
the 28th the 29th the 30th the
31st.
of January.
thus time goes by.

Robert Filliou‘s Whispered Art History (excerpt)

[ED: a decidedly gendered, old-school statement from a Fluxus founder … there are contemporary, open, and ongoing events that arose around this text, establishing 17 January as Art’s Birthday. I used to participate, but haven’t lately. The last major Fluxus-related happening was Fluxus Akademie discussion/lunch at Mary‘s in Rösrath in 2013. And in the incommunicado haze of the past few months, I discover Mary’s gone, back in March. Yet another remembrance to craft, reminding: no time to lose.]

Calmness accompanies the whole. Fear accompanies the part. Intuition goes beyond the figure-ground focus of conscious perception.

Prather, Hugh. Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1990.
posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

saturation

The capacity to engage is limited. I have hit those limits hard. In this phase of life, I cannot maintain any semblance of the old networking nomad. Looking back, through the archive, through the days, weeks, months of restless movement, engaged encounters with hundreds of people, what is there left? Engaging with colleagues during the day seems to be enough. It saturates each day, not leaving energy to engage with anyone, anything afterwards, except for the mundane dimensions of the anti-creative life of Imperial consumption.

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: Preston, VIC, Australia

back to B&B

Martin Buber and David Bohm — German-speaking Hasidim Jew phil-theo-logist/sopher and Anglo, McCarthy-black-listed quantum physicist. Unlikely combination, but in my practice, my pathway, they elicit a resonance unlike any others, although there are Legion sources of energized engagement that have made my trajectory a rich experience. All those Others who share the way(s). But I will work with these two as they both resonate. Simple, complex. One provoking an imaged-cosmos where there are no things, but only activated orders of manifestation, and this condition of being directly informing the way of interaction and relation between the Self and the Other. And the other thinker, sketching a cosmos which itself comes-to-be in the reality of relationship: within the encounter lies the source of all things.

Both these worldviews are highly idiosyncratic visions of the cosmos and also, consequentially, of human relation, but neither of them are mutually exclusive of the other. I find my own worldview shares at least this characteristic with both of them. But there are other ways in which our models overlap, and it is these pathways of flow which will stimulate the thesis.

The image of humans and their view of the cosmos that I always describe in a classroom setting is: (this after getting to know the students at least a bit) — “it’s as though we are dancing around the Void, each of us, in groups, pairs, alone, catching glances out of the corners of our eyes of it, calling out what is looks like in throat-tones frantic with fear, joy, and wonder. Sometimes a whole group will shout out in unison, the agreed-upon vision. Others stay to speaking the wind. Occasionally we turn to face it on, or are rudely pulled by the shoulder by another who is straying close to the edge. It has no name, yet we all insist on calling It something. Even when we turn our backs directly to it, we can feel it, perhaps even more than when facing it.”

So, idiosyncrasy is a way of movement (as point-of-view needs change), which leads to a clear, albeit self-relative, experience (impression) and the consequent expressions while regarding, receiving, that. Springing from these two pathways (im- and ex-pression) is a third which dictates, in part, the motion of the point-of-view. It is a feedback mechanism which generates, gradually or quickly, a worldview that touches on the Void if only by discrimination against what cannot be directly named.

Okay, working (or “working”) in the office much of the week and weekend, not too effective, but I think I did finally begin to imagine a framework to hang all these words on. And it feels like one that will work. Norie gave me a couple other theses of former students of hers — very interesting works. My intuition about her seems well-placed. And it’s a funny expression of the morphing social network that I’ve participated in the last 20 years. Connected.

And swimming. Hope to hit 100 km/3 months by the time I move on. That’s attainable, easily if I take care of things.

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!

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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”

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Migrating: Art: Academies: done

MigAA book cover (pdf download)

After eight weeks of intensive effort, sometimes re-writing almost from scratch a wide range of (English-second-language) articles, essays, and academic papers, the second and final book from the MigAA project is done and at the printers. Bravo to the Alfa60 designers, Joseph and Lina in Vilnius — perhaps this book will win awards like the last one did! And big kudos to El Jefe, miga, without whom, none of this would have come to pass, none of it!

This is the jacket blurb I wrote in ten minutes — the day Lina was sending the book to the printers! more “Migrating: Art: Academies: done”

posted
  • place: Sydney, NSW, Australia

gah,

Got that one hurdle out of the way, though there is still the matter of the accompanying paper. I saw very clearly the interface between the institution and the wider world, where the protocol of the (semi-)ordered system imposes its particular form on the flow.

But, in the end, I may not be able to over-come the imposition of a protocol so polariz(ing)(able). The one person who coordinates the checking of unsatisfactory/satisfactory at this juncture did not seem to engage with my presentation at all. Except to point out that I satisfied precisely none of the assessment criteria. Were it a response that was nuanced, I could understand missing the mark, but with a complete rejection of the presentation, I find it a little over the top, and, well, disingenuous if the term intellectual engagement is being bandied about at the same time. If I didn’t have 20+ years of teaching with fifteen of it moving through this exact space of inquiry across tens of universities with hundreds of graduate students, I might be open to the idea that what I am articulating is not graspable or open to engagement, but in this case, I suspect some other mechanism was operating, what else can I do?

posted
  • place: Wendover, Utah

CLUI residency — Energy of Situation

Some final words on the residency period:

Energy of Situation

Rather than producing new material configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system, I chose to concentrate on a fundamental closer to the bone, as it were: the production of new configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system. What we do changes the cosmos, always, everywhere, (because everywhere’s are not separated nor distinct).

Traditional art production is (merely) the (re)configuration of certain flows in the near (and far) surround of the producer. My approach generally falls under this model but approaches the reconfiguration process from an entirely different path. Entering a ‘residency’ is (merely) moving from one (life)-situation into another: we are constantly doing this in life, transitioning from one semi-stable configuration to another, with periods of more-or-less instability in between. If one leaves traditional temporal and spatial metrics behind, this process may be seen simply as the modulation of a constancy of flowing condition. The particular conditions and configurations of a situation dictate the potential range of reconfigurations possible, given the energy input of the individual and the embodied life-energy/life-time that is available. The configuration is merely a cumulative apprehended set of flows occurring with a reductive purview (and is always relative to the observer!) There is the ‘locally external’ factor of the accessibility of external energy sources for reconfiguring, but if one approaches the situation as a more autonomous and self-contained instance, the range of possibility is limited just as life-time and life-energy is limited. It is along this approach that I undertook this residency. (I will here omit a wider discussion of the framework of my personal model of the cosmos as there isn’t the room here to undertake it even in brief).
more “CLUI residency — Energy of Situation”

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devoir: a re-naming

Further, deeper, wider, (more iconoclastic), what is research? Merely to search again? The broadening of a socially-sanctioned knowledge-base? A connecting-of-threads to historic tradition? A discovery of what’s been before? A following of a pre-existing trajectory (but with more fuel for a higher, further flight)? What about re-sensing instead of re-searching? Immersing senses in a situation again (related to German entgegen ‘opposite’). Sensually immersive: sensing difference again (from another situation), and reflecting on that. Or, better yet, riding the gradient of that difference, and using that potential, that power, that source, to express from.

Re-search — to circle again, more intensively — but to remain detached. Neither academic detachment nor technological objectivity are the way that is needed now. We need immersive, connected, aware, and sensual be-ing. In order to apprehend what the world needs of us. An empathetic engagement with all expressions of life-energy. more “devoir: a re-naming”

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NWS, Australia

controlled or dynamic processes?

Do humans (life-forms) exert control over environments by modifying flows to help them re-member and stabilize their forms? To form them in a way that resonates within their energized neural storage regime (life-form)? Probably not, as from a bio-thermodynamic point of view, life exerts control (simply) in order to deplete energy gradients (according to the authors of Into the Cool, an exploration of NET (non-equilibrium thermodynamics) and its relation to life/living systems).

Or can this even be considered a control process, this interaction of modifying flows? Or is it merely part of the cumulative (dynamic) process of life as an engagement of the entropic/negentropic fundamentals of the universe?

I realized that in Regime of Amplification I got the terminology a bit wrong — focusing on the anisotropic concentration and rarefaction of energized matter as the fundamental condition (as driven by gravitational forces). When it is the gradient between the two situations which is of primary interest and importance. — a bit similar to seeing only the elemental yin and yang instead of the overarching dynamic unity, the taijitu. So, a rewrite is in order — to look at the transitional state rather than (theoretical and limited) end-states.

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elevator pitch

Establish (via dancing around) the fundamentals of the cosmos; establish (by chanting a framework for apprehending those fundamentals) what individual presence seems to be; establish (by tracing lived experience) what the dynamic of interactions of human engagement are; situate (humanely) those encounters in the wider social system (or continuum of relation); examine the impact/role of technology on/in all of this; frame a creative praxis that might transcend the limits of those impacts while taking into account an energized world view, and, indeed, lessen those impacts in a sustainable way; open an empowered pathway to decode what is happening along this moment in history. These are the primary goals of the work.

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The Military

(extracted and edited from The Regime of Amplification)

The second example — though it is a much more complex combination of pathways in its geo-political and material deployments and in its interaction with the overall continuum of relation — is foundational to the TSS (techno-social system) and is also a prototypical expression of amplification. It is even more a prototype than radio. Radio is merely one sub-system of what is ultimately a military organization.

A military system incorporates all the requisite patterns of an amplification system: input signal (the human population and other concentrated energy sources available to the TSS); amplification process (provisioning and equipping of the select grouping of people through the collective life-energies of the greater population of the TSS); the feedback system (communications, command, and control systems); and the output signal (the expression of amplified (and directed) energy flow as a campaign to secure the viability of the TSS either by offense or defense).
more “The Military”

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what is language?

(a title: On The False Invariance of Text)

Writing is oscillation, it is frequency, it is tone and overtone. It is directed at a hundred thousand invisible targets some not yet alive, most dying, some dead. It is all-encompassed by the infinite flux of be-ing at the same time as being uncircumscribable. Resonance drives the text. Without resonance, the text is more than dead, it is simply not. Null, less-than-zero. Silent. While speaking in tongues, interfacing with one another, we tack meanings to the words, sounds, making them become for a moment, a surfacing out of a wider flow of dis-connection. Or merely happenstance accretion, coagulation, a resulting (sepsis-in-mind) of something (quelque chose), making: turbid agglomeration becomes acculturation.

The whole engagement with the idea of doing the doctorate arises from a combination of pragmatics and desire. The pragmatic considerations are real to the degree that the author understands the social value of ideas that are formally exposed, independent of format, and that the Other takes up, paying life-time and attention to. This is a basic premise. Desire enters the process where there is the need to be recognized, this, not on a social scale, but on a simple and uncorrupted personal scale. There is the deep risk that both these motivations are hollow and base-less. To defeat that potential, the process will be open and open-ended, unending. It will not begin and end with bound covers and stitched bindings. It will mimic life that came from who-knows-where and is going elsewhen.

One point of this blog is to de-stabilize the general process of writing to the degree of opening up expressive possibility. It is not here to be a blog, with endless sifting through and cross-referencing of network sludge. It is an armature on which to hang the infinity of idiosyncratic individual inputs and some limited external inputs into the process flow.

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NWS, Australia

more Buber

Human dialogue, therefore, although it has its distinctive life in the sign, that is in sound and gesture (the letters of language have their place in this only in special instances, as when, between friends in a meeting, notes describing the atmosphere skim back and forth across the table), can exist without the sign, but admittedly not in an objectively comprehensible form. On the other hand an element of communication, however inward, seems to belong to its essence. But in its highest moments dialogue reaches out even beyond these boundaries. It is completed outside contents, even the most personal, which are or can be communicated. Moreover it is completed not in some ‘mystical’ event, but in one that is in the precise sense factual, thoroughly dovetailed into the common human world and the concrete time-sequence. more “more Buber”

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trauma

Yes, there was an event; yes, an event began, barely, when she began to say something. But this event did not come to fruition, for nothing, nothing really, happened — except a sudden defamiliarization of my world, an unforeseen estrangement brought about by the least violent of all acts — the mere emitting of sounds — that topple the sense-structure of my world. After she breached my silent existence, silence returned, devouring both of us again by expropriating my ability to respond. So nothing, nothing really, happened. But this nothing, compared to “idle chatter” and the “forgetfulness” of an ordinary conversation, was much more dramatic. It produced in me an effect like no other. Considering what happened, or rather, what failed to take place, I must confess that I was profoundly affected by it. In fact, I am still living that event through the unique nothingness brought home to me by the incident, suffering from it, agonizing over it as an event that keeps returning as a non-event. In any case, the undeniable fact is that there was an event, there took place a situation that, although nothing, nothing really happened in it, is still happening now. It was like a traumatic “primal scene,” forever gone but constantly coming back. — Briankle Chang, (1996) Deconstructing Communication: Representation, Subject, and Economies of Exchange. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (p 224)

Reflecting on the abstracted essence of the gap between the self and the other: it suggests the reality that we cannot share the same point of view. There exists an infinitely deep irruption, separation, or gap, between the Self and the Other. This is defined partly by the presence of the energized matter that makes up our bodies and by the fact that this particular embodied form of matter cannot be collocated or commingled with another body. There is the warm and wet topology of sensual engagement, but this is not collocation, though some would like to believe that it is. The Self will never share the same point-of-view as the Other. My eyes cannot be collocated with yours. I may exchange places with you, but when all is change along the arrow of time, what you experienced there and then, I cannot experience there and now. The interstitial chasm exists within constant change and flow and it exists as long as life is embodied. Some models of transcendence suggest a unification, an omniscient one-ness, after embodiment ends, but here and now we all face the challenge of hypostasis, that puzzling duality of existing in a transitory body now and yet connected with an apparently detachable spirit before and after.

Communication cannot not take place. — ibid, p. 227

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

Holly’s graduation

Golden High School graduation at Brooks Field on the School of Mines campus on what starts off as a dreary and chilly morning with uncharacteristic clouds sticking to the foothills. Holly is the Valedictorian. the weather clears up by the end when Montse and I head back to the house for final party preparations. I take the opportunity to get the whole Williamson Clan together for a group portrait.

fourteen hours later, celebrations finally end with a round of toasts for the graduate.

Dear Holly. What a pleasure to be here to celebrate this time with you! The teacher who spoke at graduation is precisely right that whenever two humans cross pathways they are both changed in ways that are not (always) immediately apparent. This is a powerful principle of life: when we realize and take to heart that this occurs, we may intensify the outcomes of these encounters through open, honest, and unfettered engagement. This engagement should be attentive, concentrated, and focused. Through this, any other human encountered becomes a collaborative partner in a dynamic creative process that is the essence of life. As is taught, the next person you encounter may be the Buddha, and thus, how you engage governs the potential for enLightenment. I wish you all the best in your near and far future; that the pathways you walk will be full of those transformative encounters; and that the transformations bring the breath-taking inspiration that makes life joyous. Life is a phenomena! You are phenomenal! At any point you have questions, answers, observations, or discoveries to share, I am happy to give you my attention. Thank you for being you! oxoxox jh

posted
  • place: Denver, Colorado

dorkbot303

Vm
P
d

Jane also organizes a nice Denver dorkbot event along with the Denver Open Media crew live broadcast on community cable channel 57 and on KGNU. she invites me to do an hour talk/presentation on whatever—networking, projects, community activism—live. interesting dynamic, I’ll get a copy of it at some point. Mark Hosler from negativland does the hour after mine. later there is a small party upstairs.

A chaotic night, as it was also Dona’s photo exhibition opening at Sliding Door Gallery, only a block away. Very strange coincidence as I practically never had any engagements in Denver, ever. It was a First Friday street night, and the neighborhood was packed. Very nice to see such civil activities like that in the US, maybe there is a cultural renaissance about to fire up. Maybe in response to the collapse of consumer capitalism in the developed world. Folks had consumed enough of all that consumer crap on credit on loan on mortgage on plastic (now, is that hydrocarbon plastic we’re talking about?).

Dona had some photographic print work along with Camilla Briggs and her organic textile set-pieces. Dona’s images of the Dalai Lama which impressed themselves into works about Light were distracting, perhaps because of his iconic status, but more basically, to have a human form entering the field of radiative holy-ness of Light, well, either redundant or simply not necessary. Or maybe too obvious. Dunno, precise problem can’t be circumscribed without seeing all the images again. Were these stills from a movie? Why not. Fluid seeing. It seemed to miss the regularity of decisive format choices — sizing and positioning. A smaller panoramic cloud sequence, while not astonishing for those of us humans who fling ourselves about in metal tubes high in the air, was moving in its internal brilliance. Abstraction helps to refine expression of aesthetic. Unless the figuration is more personal — the opposite of iconic. Any body would do. Any body is holy enough for Light to play with.

Camilla’s wax-sealed rose petals needed intimacy, something played out right there in the middle of this civilian crowd. they needed to be touched, to be touching the participating humans in the room. the patio behind the gallery was funky.

And, otherwise, I especially enjoyed the DOM folks, lead by Directrice Ann Theis, and their real passion for what they were doing. Haven’t run across that too often—the last time, in Latvia, at the Cultural/Historical Museum dance party in 2001—and especially not among US cultural-industry sector folks. Usually there is a desperation and even irritated defiance in the air.

I was too distracted by observing the social scene and having rather intensive conversations and interactions with others. Very dynamic evening. Enjoyable.

Bravo!

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thesis proposal :: Basics

Title

Sonic Presence Within The Networked Regime of Amplification

This research explores the relationship of (sonic)energy to social be-ing, technology, and the consequent possibilities for creative action.

Subject

Sound is energy, sound carries energy. Sonic energy is a product and a by-product of life. It forms one expression of organismic presence. It is one particular energized expression of our band-limited life that developed its particular characteristics through evolutionary processes. These processes are essentially structured around variations in the (spatial and temporal) concentrations and availabilities of energy. As one such expression, sound is employed as one means through which humans enhance their survivability. Amplification represents a particular model for what is essentially a life-process that operates on various energy flows, modulating their basic characteristics. How human collectives generate and interact with sonic energy governs a wide swath of their consequent techno-social interactions. This research is a distributed exploration of sound as a carrier of energy between the Self and the Other — as it is mediated through the globe-spanning network of techno-social amplification systems. Specifically, it will be a critical exploration of our contemporary techno-social terrain through the application of this model in a variety of creatively energized situations.

Outcomes

Formally, outcomes will include the dissertation, live/online performances, workshops, a blog, festival participation, and conference presentations. Through developing an energy-based model that amplification provides an armature for, it is my hope that this research will generate a powerful tool for analyzing and understanding the dynamic affects of technological systems on creative human engagement at all scales. This knowledge will be applied to facilitate actual situations for this engagement to be explored.

Keywords

amplification, sound, (sonic) energy, power, technology, techno-social systems, networks, continuum of relation, dialogue, collaboration, presence, sustainable creativity, social action, entropy, thermodynamics

posted

thesis proposal :: A Note on Trans-disciplinarity

Trans-disciplinarity is a popular expression for the need for thinking (and expressing!) outside the cubic space defined by any limited social system or sub-system. Innovative solutions are often found by combining many possible strands of thought from disparate disciplines and points of view. Critical engagement of a plurality of voices is essential when moving in trans-disciplinary spaces, and this will constantly be kept in mind to the degree possible. The use of language in a trans-disciplinary space is a particular challenge which, to a significant degree, determines the successful outcome of the attempt to bridge disciplinary spaces. Indeed, disciplinarity is often defined by the cumulative social use of a specific linguistic system that is exclusive to the discipline. As a former engineer, and now as an educator and artist for the past two decades, I have significant experience in coherently bridging the somewhat isolated linguistic spaces that define those different ‘worlds.’

It is clear that there is a solid need for this kind of inquiry in the trans-disciplinary space of techno-social systems given the intensity of technological development and the complexity of globalized human presence. It is my desire to contribute to the search for sustainable principles and systems that honor first the need for a healthy continuum of human relation instead of placing technological solutions at the forefront. This, at the same time as acknowledging the fundamentally symbiotic inter-relationship of the two concepts.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

green plodding

Berlin, Kiel, Berlin, New York. place frames time. more-or-less. and what of it? multiplicity of options and possibilities frames the next phase of movement. and it is only a matter of survival.

Miga makes a plate of pancakes. with jam from his parents garden in rural Lithuania. nice!

creative production slows to small fragments of text, some images, and some sounds. no mental space to work on the numerous proposals which hang over the head. not interested in the green consumer revolution which is leading the media art world around, tugging on gold-ringed nostrils to keep the plod in acceptable directions. as with so many times before the engagement of science by art is naive and un-productive even in the simple critical sense of raising real issues and stimulating real dialogues. disappointing.

but conversation with Udo last night around aporee maps and some ideas come up along with possible information/collaboration sources that I already have in place from older networks.

in Berlin for a day.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

end of a long month

meet Karla briefly at a rather banal art event: Kunstinvasion im Blumengroßmarkt, Berlin-Kreuzberg.

idiosyncratic living is, by nature, an expression of a way of going. art (or the art world), as an accepted social function or framework in the techno-social system, puts specific limits on what protocols are acceptable and what not, it is important that the individual 1) realize this, and 2) that they do not allow those frameworks to dominate their expressive possibilities. a life-pathway is the primary expressive tool. the minute and daily form of life is the most indicative expression of an individuals presence and the possibilities of their expressive engagement.

It is sobering to think that we might be almost totally ignorant of the vast if dispersed sources of free energy which underlie our very existence. We may have more in common than we think with the medieval peasants, who could see the stars whirling in the sky but could not begin to figure out the connection between those stars and the physics of their everyday life. Like them, we may be doomed to essential ignorance in our lifetimes. (Many medieval people tried to imagine connections between the stars and their lives, but the results were quite embarrassing.) But if we develop the mathematical prerequisites and work hard and patiently and boldly to extend our real understanding, then perhaps someday our descendants will be able to attain a level of life that we peasants can hardly imagine. Alternatively, of course, the option of stagnation, fragmentation and extinction is also available to all species in the greater biosphere. — Paul J. Werbos

posted
  • place: Lübeck, Germany

e-culture and good food

Over in Lübeck, meet miga and then head to lunch with Andreas at Nui which I remember from the teaching at ISNM before. Had to get some outline of what is happening to the slowly sinking Titanic and what is required from me when I do a short course on e-culture in the spring.

Content: This seminar will explore the entire global regime of the trans-disciplinary field called “e-culture” as an intersection of digital technologies and cultural practices. Using case-studies to find out what is working and what is not, we will examine the technologies that most affect this sector, the political and economic policies that form it, and the social systems where it finds its place. As one model for the engagement of “new media’ technologies and social systems, “e-culture,” along with the “Creative Industries,” are the scene for much innovation, research, hype, and media reportage. This seminar will hunt for some truth by examining specific situations, precedent, technological infrastructures, and current trends.

Key phrases include: infotainment; web 2.0; economics of attention; locative media; wearable computing; technology globalization; media research; reception, storage, and transmission of culture; creative industries; cultural patrimony; cultural computing; corporate culture; jobs?; non-governmental organizations (NGO’s); ubicomp (ubiquitous computing); e-government; society of spectacle; globalization/dislocation of culture; Ikea for the Art Market; European Union effects; Soros Centers; networking; creative action; Road Warriors; First or Second Life?; the Finnish Model; future scenarios; borders and cultural difference; collaborative presences; and so on.

posted
  • place: Bremen, Germany

starts

class begins. another configuration. not so comfortable in my teaching skin after all this time away. but so far, seems to be a workable group. the vocal along with the silent. the brave and the timid. the left-brain and the right. time is the chief enemy, only five days for this one.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

The Wild Surmise

Sue Thomas poses some interesting questions in her search for possible synergies between the cyber and the natural. it’s an open project — add you own answers on her site!

Please describe where you lived and your strongest memories of nature during the years of your growing up. I’m interested in both positive and negative recollections of anything from the smallest plot to the largest wilderness, including animals and plants.

sotto voce: I am a native of Alaska, born there as a Cold War military child. My father, a senior Pentagon analyst, sport-hunted grizzly and polar bears among other magnificent animals. We moved to Boston, then Southern California, then Washington DC, living in suburban or rural fringes of cities. A primal memory was of viewing a total solar eclipse from a beach in Acadia National Park in the northeast state of Maine, USA, at five years old. Watching the sun be consumed, until there was only a shimmering ring of fire surrounding a black hole in the sky. My father was an amateur astronomer, and I accompanied him on a further four total eclipse expeditions. Along with these specific memories, there are general memories of sleeping in the woods, of eating around a fire, of washing in streams, mosquitoes, and dark star-brilliant skies. more “The Wild Surmise”

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

fading away

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

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

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

Remote Presence :: Streaming Life : info

[ED: Relevant to the recent “pulling plugs” post, and whilst migrating some workshop documentation from the static neoscenes site to the blog, here are the deets for a one-week workshop I facilitated in Helsinki in 2007—squeezed in between another workshop in Sydney and lectures at several universities in San Diego, Santa Barbara, London, Amsterdam, and Kiel. Busy times. (An associated essay In The Presence of Networks: A Meditation on the Architectures of Participation was published in the festival publication (pdf download)).]

Welcome! Following is more detailed information on the workshop presented by John Hopkins and brought to you by the pixelache2007 festival and Artists’ Association MUU in Helsinki, Finland.

Dates: March 21-23 & 26-31, 2007
Location: MUU gallery & Media Base, Lönnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki, Finland
Daily Hours: 1030 to 1630
Final Event 31 March, 2007, 1700 – 0200

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

In the ubiquity of networked media spaces where we distribute our wireless lives, what happens to our creative processes? How may we build a functioning architecture of participation for productive collaboration and interaction between the Self and Others?

This dynamic workshop will bring participants to a new state of awareness about their own creative practice. It will accomplish this through an exploration of human collaboration and connection within the space of networks. It explores conceptual and practical issues around creative engagement, culminating in the hands-on production of a live and online streaming-media network event with global participation.

PARTICIPANT PROFILE:

With an engaged and holistic approach to facilitation, the workshop is ideal for individuals working in any discipline; it is designed to draw in a wide range of students, from those working with ‘traditional’ art materials, independent artists working in new media OR old media; VJ’s and DJ’s; media, design, film, and art students; media art producers and directors; network technologists and designers; culinary, engineering, and IT students; collaborative software developers and users — all of these will gain a powerful perspective on their own creative practice. The workshop is open to anyone with an interest in online collaboration and creative engagement at both a local and remote scale. There are NO technical background requirements. People with previous experience in streaming media, performance, digital audio and video, VJ work, etc, who wish to push their practice to a new level are also welcome.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own creative works, backgrounds, networks, and impulses into the situation to maximize the potentials of open peer-to-peer engagement. We will finish the workshop with a re-vitalized creative practice, a new understanding of collaborative dynamics, and a deeper understanding of a wide range of technologies available for creative networking.

A maximum of 15 participants will be chosen from applicants with the idea to bring together a wide spectrum of cross-disciplinary energies.

TO APPLY:

!!!TOO LATE NOW, BUT IF YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THE WORKSHOP, EMAIL US
neopixel [at] pixelache.ac
THERE IS A WAITING LIST, YOU MAY YET STILL BE ABLE TO ATTEND!!!

THE DETAILS:

This workshop moves from concepts and theories of creative action to the actualities of a sustainable creative practice mediated by technological and human networks.Online collaborative visual/sonic activities and platforms succeed when facilitators/participants understand the dynamics of human network-building as well as the possible technologies involved. The politics of collaboration underlie much of the potential of technologically-mediated social interaction. We will address the complex social politics of technology and build a powerful model for the critical and creative engagement of media of all types.

There will be a substantial exploration of the subjects of:

  • – tactical media
  • – creativity
  • – social networking
  • – design of sustainable systems
  • – principles of human engagement
  • – networks vs hierarchic systems
  • – ad hoc networks
  • – human presence as mediated by technology
  • – social politics of technology
  • – technologies/skill sets engaged will include: audio and video production software & tools, VJ software, streaming media solutions, open-source platforms, protocols, physical computing, live performance platforms & tools, synchronous communications applications

The final day on the workshop will be a public/live/online event. It will be a multi-channel multi-screen collaborative happening with live/local and online/remote performance components coming together for several hours in a relaxed and experimental atmosphere. Workshop participants will not only develop content for the event, but will help facilitate all aspects of it including the technical infrastructure, the local ambience, and the remote coordination. A number of local artists will be invited to participate with sonic and visual inputs, along with remote streams coming from New York, Montreal, Sydney, Los Angeles, and other locations.

In the search for Architectures of Participation, the workshop:

  • – examines a wide range of issues beginning from a fundamental definition of technology through to absolutely contemporary technological developments that affect socio-political and cultural scenarios
  • – presents a highly-developed model for comprehending the complexities of human presence and creative action in the contemporary world
  • – facilitates deep dialogue on local social/cultural/technical issues along with other issues relevant to participants
  • – establishes a broad-ranging, inspiring, and critical context for engaging a wide variety of technologies
  • – provides a powerful context for self-development and development of collaborative activities by presenting and subsequently exercising fundamental skills and awareness
  • – provides a comfortable discursive space to explore a wide range of historical and contemporary developments of art and science
  • – maps out connections between creative processes and technological mediation
  • – develops a deeper praxis-based starting-point for participants, helping them identify their own creative sources and tendencies
  • – involves practice-based exercises to develop personal creative focus
  • – provides a supportive atmosphere for rapid collective knowledge-building and collaborative sharing

Bio for John Hopkins:

As an active network-builder with a background in engineering, hard science, and the arts, Hopkins practices a nomadic form of performative art and teaching that spans many countries and situations. He has taught workshops in more than 20 countries and 50 institutions across Europe and North America. Recent streaming performance nodes include Berlin, New York, Sydney, Helsinki, Riga, Amsterdam, Strasbourg, Santa Barbara, Winnipeg, San Francisco, and, of course, online. He studied film with renown experimental film-maker Stan Brakhage in the late 1980’s. He was recently artist-in-residence at the Sibelius Academy’s Center for Music and Technology in Helsinki, Finland. https://neoscenes.net

Brought to you by:

This workshop is a collaboration between: pixelache 2007, Artists’ Association MUU, and neoscenes.

posted
  • place: Kiel, Germany

Remote Presence :: Streaming Life : call for participation

Call for Workshop Applicants:

Remote Presence: Streaming Life

Presented by John Hopkins as part of the pixelache 2007 Architectures of Participation Festival and in collaboration with Artists’ Association MUU

Dates: March 21-23 & 26-31, 2007
Location: MUU gallery & Media Base, Lönnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki, Finland
Daily Hours: 1030 to 1630
Final Event 31 March, 2007, 1700 – 0200

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

In the ubiquity of networked media spaces where we distribute our wireless lives, what happens to our creative processes? How may we build a functioning architecture of participation for productive collaboration and interaction between the Self and Others?

This dynamic workshop will bring participants to a new state of awareness about their own creative practice. It will accomplish this through an exploration of human collaboration and connection within the space of networks. It explores conceptual and practical issues around creative engagement, finishing with the hands-on production of a live and online streaming-media network event with global participation.

The workshop is open to anyone from any discipline with an interest in collaboration and creative engagement at both a local and remote scale. There are NO technical background requirements. People with previous experience in streaming media, performance, digital audio and video, VJ work, etc, who wish to push their practice to a new collaborative level are also welcome.

On Saturday, 31 March, the final day of the workshop will be a live & online event. Workshop participants will not only develop digital content for the event, but will also help facilitate all aspects of it including the technical infrastructure, the local ambiance, and the remote coordination.

For detailed information visit:

https://neoscenes.net/blog/82803-remote-presence-streaming-life-info

A maximum of 15 participants will be chosen from local and international applicants with the idea to bring together a wide spectrum of cross-disciplinary energies.

THE WORKSHOP IS FREE OF CHARGE.

Those interested will need to send:

NAME:

LOCATION:

EMAIL:

Along with your reasons for interest in workshop and a brief background (studies, creative work, and activities) to:

neopixel@pixelache.ac

DEADLINE for Applications 5 March 2007.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

vholoce

another Furtherfield review:

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

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

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

defining instruments

long hike onto the bench above the campground and above Mitten Park. lizards, snakes, birds, jack rabbits, mule deer, limestone, sandstone, chert, black widows, other spiders, textures, sounds, steep climbs, looking over several precipices. there is nothing here. there is only. there is only energy. mind reflects back surface noise and shapes, so far. noise of social engagement. clearing will take time. and will ultimately bring back more power to the spirit. hoping that no job offers arrive during this period of being offline. doubtful that anything will. given the record of life to this point.

darkness falls drifting slowly upwards from the ground. under the huge cottonwood Light is lost. in the branches of the piñon. blond dead grass radiates sunshine recalled from noon. sandstone walls the heat. moon begins to Light canyon walls after twiLight. high-pitched bat chirps ping fast when bug is echo-located, otherwise, slower twips as they sail around the heard space, defining its dimensions. all this mostly unseen to eye.

posted
  • place: en route - Prescott, Arizona - Durango, Colorado

road-trip

still mulling Marc Tuter’s article in Leonardo; mulling how the praxis model for supra-academic success entails generating texts that fit into book-forms; mulling rhetoric; mulling spin; mulling at the inertia which keeps social institutions functional. as long as individuals are willing to place life energy in representative forms.

when co-option takes place — it is often (always) from a form of exhaustion of the self to resist the social inertia of a situation. peer pressure in a vastly more brutal and subtle way. although one powerful solution to this creeping anti-autonomy is to have a sustainable/sustained lived praxis that is authentic — with spiritual presence and active engagement.

social inertia keeps me on the road on the long drive across the reservation to Durango.

Maps are power. Either you will map or you will be mapped. — Nietschmann

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

The GenerativeCollager

As a test-review for furtherfield neoscenes reviews a random online project by Sandra Crisp:

Hmmmm. Recalling a review I did some years back for kunstnet in Oslo, it seemed interesting to pretend for a moment I was a novice user who had just received a URL of interest from a good friend who’s critical opinion I trusted.

A novice user perhaps wouldn’t be using FireFox on a Mac, that’s clear. More likely Safari. When I attempt to go to the project from the introduction page, as the Java applet loads, waiting, waiting, until finally I get an error window with the following text:

WORKING VARIABLES NEEDED FUNCTIONS ***************************************************
// SET UP ALL THE VARIABLES FOR THE IMAGE BLISTERING void setup() { // CREATE THE TIMERS AND IMAGE COLLAGERS size(WIDTH,HEIGHT); t = new Texter(width,height); timer = new Timer(500); collager = new Collager(); collageCount = new Counter(3); // <- CHANGE IMAGES PER TIMER COUNT //load a sound and loop it soundA = loadSound(“SURSHLOOP.Wav”); //this loads the sound soundA.Loop(); …Snip… Timer.SetTarget(floor(random(500,1500))); // <- CHANGE IMAGE DROP TIME } // TELL THE COLLAGER TO PUT A RANDOM PICTURE ON THE SCREEN collager.Paint(); // MAKE IT ALL NICE AND SMOOTH smooth(); } loadPixels(); performDblBuff(dblBuff, pixels); updatePixels(); t.Paint(); //updatePixels(); } / ******************************************************

Somehow I want to add the e.E.Cummings text:

this is the way the world ends,
this is the way the world ends,
this is the way the world ends,
not with a bang, but with a whimper. more “The GenerativeCollager”

posted

The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks

A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor’s note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 that set life on another trajectory.]

1.0 Statement of Problem

1.1 Introductory note

Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. more “The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks”

posted
  • place: en route - Phoenix, Arizona - Cologne, Germany

en route

en route. sitting on the floor. Phoenix SkyHarbor Airport gets poor marks on available mains plugs. very few, and so far, I found only one close enough to a seat that I could sit and work. and that chair was too far away from the gate for me to monitor what was going on, so, now perched o the floor leaning on one of the large concrete columns that support the jet-way. as usual mixed feelings in the heart on departure into the unknown. never made a direct flight to Europe from Phoenix (in memory), so this is a new protocol. security seems marginal. have to change planes and terminals in Heathrow, not really looking forward to that as it will be in the middle of my night. tried to go to bed a bit earlier last night, and set the alarm for 0500, but with the stars still shining in the window and the house cool, no way to get out of bed before 0700 when the sun starts Lighting the eastern horizon. in the shuttle down from Prescott, a young guy sitting in front of me has the word “ambiguous” embroidered on the back of his baseball cap in Techno font face. red on gray. he gets the attention of the two young girls in front of him by asking their opinion on the diamond engagement ring procured from his pocket — he decided this morning to buy it for his girlfriend who lives in Kansas City. he is on his way to the bus station in Phoenix. no baggage. he plans to propose in the Kansas City bus station. what a life. no baggage. can’t begin to penetrate the reality of that kind of life. as equally perplexing as the couple profiled in USA Today with a detailed recounting of their financial status with pension, 401k, and other investments. USD 200,000 saved at 30 years old. the plan includes paying for their grand children’s college. is this sacrifice or incredibly cynical control of life. nothing is made clear by media.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

workshop

after a shaky start on Friday (combination of not enough sleep, early rising, not enough food, water). today flows. rainy outside, sun now.

This seminar/workshop explores some particular pathways and practices of creative activities with a close look at the impact of contemporary technological developments. It proposes and critically examines implementations and strategies for sustainable and relevant social engagement as mediated by technological networks.

Especially important is the establishment of an in-class situation for open dialogues on personal worldviews and experiences. This distributed human situation will be the core source for the seminar and will allow us to explore topics that are directly relevant to the practices of the individual participants. Another words, the actual form of the workshop will, by necessity, reflect the content to be discussed.

Participants are asked to share their experience-base and engage in attentive and focused discussion about the ideas that arise in the moment, and to target specific issues that inspire, challenge, or block their creative engagement of technology. These programs tend to be highly flexible and dynamic, with uncertain outcomes. But it is exactly in those un-defined spaces that novel and life-changing events occur.

The seminar facilitator, John Hopkins, is an experienced international artist, teacher, and technologist who is most currently working with live/online collaborative performance actions — occupying the social spaces represented by global telecom networks and facilitating creative action in those spaces. He maintains an extensive web space at https://neoscenes.net. Particularly relevant as an introduction to the seminar is a brief article that he wrote about his praxis for the AcousticSpace 2002 entitled “1+1=3”. That article may be found at https://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/xchange3.html. Documentation of recent activities may be found via his CV at https://neoscenes.net/info/cv/index.php.

posted
  • place: Suomenlinna, Finland

bloated bellies and dipoles

The next step. Not trying to catch anything particular in the face of mind except to slap it around until, in its silliness, it breaks apart, oozing, so that the local dogs of strict engagement can feast and bloat their bellies: “gimma ‘nother one.” Addicted to the carbon/hydrogen mixture. Energy, compacted energy sources, in carbon/hydrogen wrappings. Why not eat both? Exuding methane anyway. Spend the evening listening to Bern Porter, Burroughs, and Debord. People doing what they wanted.

And drifting through all the old images, scanned negatives, just sitting there. On the hard drive. Filling with more and more data. Then sleeping next to the archive, seeing if the magnetic dipoles will leak inspiration.

posted
  • place: Fort Myers, Florida

missing things

already leaving after a very short visit with Aunt Mary and Janet. a nice break. back to this temporary base in Boulder for the next 6 months. surely find that travel is more difficult with this long hiatus. a hiatus that is longer with fewer miles, fewer kilometers than almost ever previously in life. and nothing to say here about the no-see-ums, the retirement community of Shell Point, the sun, the clouds, storms, rain, vegetation, birds, stores. no travel documentation or review. no engagement?

Loki at least gets into it, though I affect his enjoyment with my reserve.

clear that a full-bodied text is necessary. one that posits and shares my worldview, a transcript of lectures made, fleshed out with further commentary, reflected, filtered, and packaging the energy that is danced around. it needs to be generated, but how to make that text when I don’t want it to be linked directly to the generations of previous texts. it needs to spring from direct experience. how?

and what to make the armature? academic discourse, performative speaking, hypertextual juggling? conversation? dialogue? the dialogue technique doesn’t seem to address the social volume necessary. and volume is what I need now to maintain social viability. speaking to many rather than one or two. though it is against the principle of the teaching. still don’t have a good feel for mapping this extended social space of praxis.

posted
  • place: en route Kiel - Hamburg - Berlin, Germany - Zürich, Switzerland

lunch with Mark

okay, already the system is declining. complete chaos in Hamburg. the Regional Express that Christian takes me down to in Kiel is delayed, stopping in Hamburg-Altona, so I have to race to the S-bahn to take that to the Hauptbahnhof. at first I choose the what I think is the wrong line, with several extra stops, but the most direct line is apparently completely shut down. make it to the station, racing to make the ICE to Berlin, only to find that it, too, is delayed by about 40 minutes. call Mark at the hotel, then race to another track which they announce with three minutes notice. on board the ICE, first class, full of German business types, swirling around and in between. I take an unreserved seat that has a power plug, much to the dismay of some others. settle in for the ride. more “lunch with Mark”

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

bed down

Sunday morning. affectation — (writing is an). foggy until after noon, then the sun comes out. maybe time to get out of bed. but it is warm and shared. Pancho Sanchez does the timbales from that box in the corner. portable stage, opera hall. head to Kiasma to catch Phil Hoffmann’s series of new films from the Toronto scene. good deal. cultcha. wonder if Tapio will be there? sneaking suspicion that some people look on my engagement in ART as a dance of ignorance — ignorance of the philosophical, ethical, and critical issues that are the maelstrom of contemporary cultcha. who cares? I decide to posit a position, make a stance, do the song and dance, and bed down for success. who cares? maybe just bed down and focus on that level of collaborative dialogue. the dialogue of bodies.

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

neoscenes occupation

the neoscenes occupation project for Ars Electronica (which approaches in days) begins to take some form, at least as an idea:

the educational process in the developed world is dead or dying. neoscenes wants to re-create and renew education, making it an omnidirectional flow of energies with a force multiplied far beyond the meat count and with a reach that is far ahead of the game. join neoscenes, speak, act, make a difference in your own head and body and soul. the occupation is of the network, is of each others lives, is of being, is of body, it is of it all.

neoscenes is about the creation of personal spaces wherein the individual realizes the potential of individual and collaborative creativity. it is about seizing the opportunity presented by the Internet and contemporary telecommunications to create active spaces that are autonomous of the traditional “institutions of higher learning”. it is about sharing neoscenes has established a primary level of mechanisms for this engagement in the basic technologies of the web, IRC (Internet relay chat), and the neoscene listserv. IRC, a live text-based communications medium is widely available on any networked PC; the neoscene listserv allows distribution of information via email, and this website will become a central point networking neoscenes participants and their relevant web-based information. other means of collaboration will be employed as participants decide to utilize including iVisit, CUSeeMe, FTP, VRML, and other technologies as they become available.

so it goes. now to make it happen!

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

memories of Alda

portrait, Alda with her roses, Hrísey, Iceland, June 1990

Monday morning. means nothing to me except for the beginning of a quick and long week of dinners, lunches, and other friendly convocations. lunch with Sari. Loki is still sleeping in bed after a late evening with Holly, Natalie, Rick, and Sally. he goes to bed very unhappy, and I am not sure whether this is a factor of fatigue, accumulated lack of attention, or what. MB sends me a sad email saying that Alda of Hrísey has died. Going to the island will not be the same. I recall meeting her for the first time when I was visiting Jón and Helga at their summerhouse on the island situated in the mouth of Eyjafjördur with Stefan back in August 1989. Actually Hrísey is called the Pearl of Eyjafjördur by its situation in the fjord. Alda was into her 80’s although no one that I talked to knew her age exactly. she lived alone in a modest-sized home at the far east end of the village of around three hundred that sits at the southern, sheltered end of the island. likewise, on the south side of her house, there was a small greenhouse and a very tortured fir tree. during the summer months, in that little greenhouse she tended the most fabulous roses that I have ever seen. one summer MB and I stayed in the downstairs corner room in her house, and all through the bright night a thrush sang at least 15,000 of its 30,000-small repertoire of riffs. LOUD. sitting either on top of the greenhouse, or right below the window on that fir tree. the tortuous pangs of beauty.

What our age needs is communicative intellect. For intellect to be communicative, it must be active, practical, engaged. In a culture of the simulacrum, the site of communicative engagement is electronic media. In the mediatrix, praxis precedes theory, which always arrives too late. The communicative intellect forgets the theory of communicative praxis in order to create a practice of communication. … If your goal is to communicate, you must use whatever means you have at your disposal in a given situation. Communicative praxis must always be radically contextualized. … — Taylor and Saarinen, from Imagologies: Media Philosophy

posted
  • place: McLean, Virginia

after all hallows

Here about a mile from the headquarters of the CIA and about five miles, as the crow flies, from the White House in Washington, D.C., on the south bank of the Potomac River in Virginia, staying at Kathy’s house for a week or so. Time is moving so quickly that I can hardly think. Loki and Magga arrived from Iceland on the first of November, the day after I flew north from Tallahassee via Charlotte NC to Baltimore to stay over at Steve and Genie’s place there in Catonsville. I guess that was Halloween, yes, there were trick-or-treaters dressed up and coming to the door asking for candy … Genie wasn’t feeling too well, so Steve had to put a witches hat on to dole out the goodies … The election is over, boring Clinton won over a more boring Dole. Amurika trundles onwards to the millennium. Kathy just last month arrived home here from a small town in Siberia between Omsk and Novosibirsk where she adopted a 2-1/2-year-old girl named Vika from an orphanage there. Most of my time is spent concentrating on an active and focused engagement of Loki, given the short time we have together. I am not sure when I will see him next after this, although I hope to stop by in Iceland in the late winter on my way to Finland to teach there. Separation is always such a brutal loss.

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

aristocracy of technology

Absolutely no chances to update this log of certain being here. Barely a moment to consider even the possibility in mind, much less the quiet and concentration to put hands to keyboard to make this happen. I spend long hours with other people. Teaching, speaking, discussing, listening, planning, and the rest is for slaving away on practical Web things and whatever. I have finished with all the teaching I will do in Finland on this trip. Terhi and I ended two days of intensive lecturing and hands-on work with students at the Academy of Fine Arts yesterday. The course turned out very well, the students were quite enthusiastic and motivated despite the short time imposed on the teaching. It is a good opening into a place that is in great need of getting a more broad introduction to concepts relating to networking and to technology. Oliver, the Vice-Rector of the Academy, and the Head of the Time and Space Department, has done a good job bringing technology-based mediums into the teaching space, but there is the usual resistance. I find technophobia to be an interesting phenomenon. On one side, a distrust of machines is necessary, even demanded by the excesses of the situation we find ourselves (our Western Selves) in these days. But unless there is some kind of (anarchic?) engagement of technology by some people at least, we leave the driving to the Aristocracy of Technologists. They will rule in their new Hierarchical Form (Consumer/Slave vs Producer/Master) without opposition. Ahhrgh. I am not an ideologist, and dislike framing the issues in pseudo-academic lingo. For myself, I believe that the most revolutionary action I can engage in is an unmediated and genuine dialogue with another human being. Maybe too simplistic. I wash some clothes in the sink. It cleans my fingernails and exercises my hands at the same time. I listen to the radio, voices talking about the Market. There is no other World, it seems. To the voices of the New Media, the world is a phenomenon of the market. And the people are Workers and Consumers. I do not understand what the impact of this propaganda, this imposition of a monolithic worldview, is upon daily life. Does it dominate life? Is it true that we are merely pawns in the consume game played out by these cloaked NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations)?

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

eliminate chaos

Well, after hacking for 28 hours in 36, I am beat now … I was surviving on Rilke on the long (and delayed) flight over from NYC to Helsinki. And I was happy to recall this one favorite from the magnificent collection translated by Stephen Mitchell…

We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. — Rainer Maria Rilke

So it goes, I always say. Marvelous translation, and incredible, the crescendo it reaches, the roiling descriptive power, the shifting focus and awareness. I know this torso. I photographed it in a museum in Kässel some years back, and it figured in the Apocalyptic Dream work as one of the centerpiece icons. Then I stumble on this translation just a few years ago. Shaking. I am staying in one of the oldest reconstructed buildings on Suomenlinna, the old fortress island. It was a quarters for Russian or Swedish officers — which or both I don’t know as I haven’t really examined the history of the place. The entire island is on the short list of World Heritage Sites, and, indeed, it is an incredible place, I’ve seen nothing like it in all my imperial travels … The walls of the building I am in are over a meter thick, and it has huge windows that overlook part of the bastion and the dry dock that is full of old wooden boats. Other windows look out onto the courtyard where there is a monument to one of the Swedish monarchs. There are massive ceramic tile furnaces in each room, standing 12 feet high with gleaming white columns to each side. I have been struggling intensively to make a comeback from the recent removal of my main website from the server I was using in Iceland. I have no idea what happened, but whatever the case, I have to reconstruct my site as best I can very soon … I am getting more and more attention for the breadth and personal outlook of the site, but … Now the whole thing is gone except for this travelog work and some fragments. I only have access to three free Megabytes on this server, so I can’t reconstruct everything on it anyway. I wish I had one cheap/free server somewhere with ten or twenty megs on it … Wait a minute, I am having a deja vu at the moment. Sitting here at 01:22 in the morning, on the island, after two hard days work. Typing these very words. I had a dream about this. Somewhere, sometime ago. The feeling of trying to do things but not being able to eliminate the CHAOS from life. And almost wanting to succumb to it. Well, it isn’t really chaos, it is just the conditions of living itself, nothing that can or should be eliminated from living, for it is life itself. I cannot allow the failure of these machines, of my techniques deter me from a full enjoyment and engagement in life.

Life is what’s happening when you’re busy making other plans … — John Lennon

Funny, poignant? and True! He speaks and sings true things often, in spirit.