essence – the neoscenes/tech-no-mad (b)log ::

15 : July : 202215 : July : 2022

place: Cedaredge, Colorado

shitstorm continues

No, nothing political or social in this posting, aside from oblique references. Instead, the radical politics of incarnation: Covid breaches body wall. After more than two years of remaining out of the reach of the virus, I fall. And not out of the woods at all, yet. Physical health continues to take a beating: from the elimination of daily swimming at the onset of the pandemic; the substitution of solo cycling and hiking that was impacted by hernia issues; cancer diagnosis, surgery 1, surgery 2; dental issues, surgery 3; moving west into isolation, cycling was coming back, and then, after the first major travel in more than four years, getting hammered down by Covid.

Thoughts flicker across seven chakras: unattainable transcendence. Systems for dealing with existence, for bringing it to a higher level, fail. Rumbling through archive, tweaking, reading, re-membering situations, people, and flows: frozen and reductive fragments. Consuming way too much media as time-filler. The only substantive understanding that surfaces is the imperative for change, before it becomes impossible. The past six years under the influence of bland and negative energies: the end is coming. Change. and Movement.

Carlo Rovelli’s book “The Order of Time” pushes forward many of Bohm’s ideas on the nature of reality (without attribution), and in the process, emphasizes how thin the facade is on our constructed reality of solid, constant, and immutable things. His cumulative sketch on the nature of time obliquely vaporizes anything carnate. Hurrah for him! We are flows, we are essences of energy, negentropic, until entropy strikes us down and we merge with the cosmological eye.

What bunk. Truly I have nothing of substance to say. Evidence of what is necessary: change. Empty head, body broken, throat raw, tongue bitten, teeth cracked.

Sumar tilfinningar er ekki hægt að tjá með venulegri samsetningu af orðum. — Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir

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 there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

“Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rainer Maria Rilke

9 : May : 201513 : June : 2024

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.

4 : January : 201128 : February : 2022

place: Prescott, Arizona

road :: amplifier / the difference?

The amplifier/road difference would sound something like this:

I defined the amplifier as a concept which exists at many different scales and in both ‘natural’ and human-dominated systems (though that particular dialectic is a problematic one). It is a system which concentrates (and by default attenuates) energy flows. It is a defined set of pathways for that energy to flow along. (a life-form is an amplifier!)

(As an example, fundamental physical laws, such as the set of principles—gravitational attraction, strong/weak nuclear forces, EM radiation, thermodynamics, etc.—’govern’ the process of stellar evolution and ‘supply’ the ‘protocols’ for the ‘expression’ of Light energy (radiation) in a highly specific and concentrated form (compared to the availability of that same energy in any random location in the universe).

In essence, humans are simply harnessing these physical laws to form their own pathways of energy flow. Indeed we can do nothing else, as these laws govern the entire observed and implied universe. So the difference between the amplifier and the protocols that ‘define’ it may only be question of articulation — that is, those physical laws, in human terms, simply exist (for us to discover and articulate over time). The protocols arise as humans initiate articulations of the extant energy flows within which we simply are. So the protocol is, again, merely, a human (socio-linguistic) reduction of observed and extant phenomena. We cannot do anything counter to those phenomena that those laws are ascribed to. However, using these reductive protocols/formula, we set up a wide variety of sub-systems which, cumulatively, are our techno-social systems — complex systems of re-routed energies. As soon as energy is re-routed, you have an amplifier situation because you consequently have a concentration/attenuation of flows. An amplifier is perhaps merely the condition of the existence of a concentration of energies. (this does get into the question of the role of, for example, gravity as a ‘protocol’ which drives the coalescing of energized matter in the universe — or is gravity actually increasing the entropy of that matter?)

25 : October : 201029 : December : 2023

Wanderlust

I kept coming back to this route for respite from my work, and for my work too, because thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking. Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals. — Rebecca Solnit

Solnit, Rebecca (2000). Wanderlust: A History of Walking. New York: Penguin Books.

It’s hard to brightly imagine that when we decide to retreat to the desert or to the mountains to walk, it is a process deeply colored and, literally, in/de-formed by relatively recent cultural contingency.

The retreat is steeped in a socially constructed reality that began to emerge around William Wordsworth and J. J. Rousseau’s time and was sparked, in part, by their actual perambulations and especially the writings that welled-up whilst they were on the road (The Excursion, by Wordsworth, for example, and Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker).

But in a completely different sense, walking (and be-ing while walking) is ahistoric. Because the present moment is never to be repeated, nor is a life-time to happen twice, the momentary events of that particular movement are unique, and uniquely inspiring. Embodied movement is a passage through the flux of difference, regardless of the pathway. And although I cannot anymore go to the delicious extremes of span and height and endurance that so many others have done and will do, it is not extremity that brings the timeless essence of movement. When all is change, the senses are taught to discern the minute difference of the everyday, ever more. In this, the near becomes just as exotic and inspiring as the far and less reachable places.

12 : October : 201012 : October : 2024

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”

12 : May : 201029 : December : 2023

place: Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

Sand Canyon transect

try a couple more timelapse shots, but they are unsatisfactory with all the technical drawbacks. Stability, resolution, quality, etc. Nothing to be done about it without a 10K investment, or more.

Instead, after the driving rain all night, start a fire in the morning, still raining, but gradually it tapers off, though it is very cloudy. The guy who came in late yesterday in a Ford Explorer with a Rocket Box on top left at some point in the morning. Gah. No place to go! He’ll end up in a ditch somewhere.
more “Sand Canyon transect”

3 : December : 200919 : January : 2018

Sydney Non-Objective Gallery exhibition

[ed: An excerpt of neoscenes::drift was recently included in the Sydney Non-Objective Catalogue and CD 2005-2010, SNO Gallery, Sydney, AU, 2010 (gallery catalog and audio CD) ISBN 978-0-9805877-3-9, Mar 2010]

reflections on neoscenes :: drift

lost in a maelstrom of sonic simulations and stimulations, re-collected, re-presented, via various creato-destructive algorithmic methodologies, drift moves through many post-cartesian spaces and through several parallel universes. depending on your frame of reference you may follow a similar path. or you may not. drift demands relativity and provides quantum realism.

(01:00:00, stereo audio, 115 mb)

blurb for SNO gallery exhibition web site, November 2009, NSW, Australia:

drift arises from an ordered archive of ambient phonographic fragments recorded over the past twenty years or so. From this archive improvisational works are assembled: indeterminate and reductive modulations that critically sample the flow of embodied be-ing. Known objects and discrete events populate our world only because we are social animals who have learned the dominant protocols of the techno-social system that we inhabit. This condition is especially onerous with the protocols circumscribing the failed (object-oriented) materialist worldview. drift consciously moves algorithmically with-in and with-out of recognizable protocols, acknowledging that without these memory-impressed protocols, all immediate experience becomes an incomprehensible flow. However, the cosmos we participate in, and indeed, are part of, is composed of these flows and comprehension is an illusion. What we know is only the temporal persistence of patterns in our embodied consciousness which resonate with an attenuated selection of those flows. drift simulates the full signal width of the flows, recognizable or not, and simply transits the field which is the present.

more “Sydney Non-Objective Gallery exhibition”

15 : October : 20092 : October : 2016

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”

14 : October : 200912 : October : 2024

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

6 : October : 200911 : October : 2024

property

as an example of the problematic of owning, and of property in general, as it is defined in Western social codes:

The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign — for all these titles are synonymous — imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once . . . [and so] property engenders despotism . . . That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse . . . if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings — kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion? — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

and

Property, acting by exclusion and encroachment, while population was increasing, has been the life-principle and definitive cause of all revolutions. Religious wars, and wars of conquest, when they have stopped short of the extermination of races, have been only accidental disturbances, soon repaired by the mathematical progression of the life of nations. The downfall and death of societies are due to the power of accumulation possessed by property. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

17 : September : 20098 : May : 2024

place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

open dialogue

What of the experience of an opening, an open, dialogue? Re-creating that experience of presenting the Self to a random collection of Others. Or to a single Other. I keep thinking of identifying, finding an Other who would be willing to have a series of dialogues that would be re-produced for the purpose of mapping out the initial space wherein the model (as script) is to be constructed. The script being a primary resource for a 60-80 hour workshop (which would never be used because the workshops are open systems and have to leave a script behind soon after starting). It would merely point in the direction for certain issues (resourcing them), giving a framework that is an optional (inspirational) component for the process. As a multi-modal hypertextual object within a social networking space, it would imitate/mimic the knowledge-flow features of a more traditional teacher (and little or nothing else — memesis of a teacher being a fundamentally antithetical concept regarding outcomes of learning!). Fundamentally, the workshops are about attentive presence, that crucial realized, actualized, and embodied facilitation process. You had to be there. (So, back to the conundrum of being and not-being when documenting, re-producing life.)

Memory — especially the memory of human encounter — is the tangible, real resonance between the Self and Other, arising through the movement of energies. Memory is a re-configuration of the energy-field that is called body; it is a dynamically persistent re-configuration of the Self. This re-configuration requires the movement of energy between the Self and the Other. I’ve been thinking about you a lot. That is the minimum requirement, and, perhaps is the only requirement, as it is the essence of the process of encounter. It is the encounter, and the flows that are the event of encounter (the Light coming from the body of the Other, the sounds emanating from them, their cumulative presence) which precipitate change in the Self. The only further commentary might come from a qualitative exploration of the flows, and the possible blocks to flow that are ever-present in relation. This view of communications does not fall easily into the traditional phenomenological tradition of communication theory. And indeed, most theories of communication that I have run across are tightly focused on language and meaning rather than any acknowledgment of a real and tangible exchange of energies that occurs in any human encounter (even when subject to the relative intensities of mediation which, in fact, are simply the presences of different forms of energy pathways imposed by cultural conditions (both internal and external to the encounter)). [ED: burbling parenthetic expression, uff]

26 : August : 20095 : May : 2024

place: Sydney, NSW, Australia

structural organization

Structural organization. Weaving this space of inquiry, exposé, or a web of deceit. A fabric of cloaking, or a dust cover for an old arm chair.

Van Leeuwen’s overview (in Multimodal Discourse) of an expressive situation that he labels semiotic production frames first a (situated) discourse which is then subject to design (to shape the delivery mechanism) which is materially formed in the production process followed by distribution (one-to-many propagation). These conceptual and actual stages are closely bound to a semiotics-based view which is rooted in the abstracted space of language and representation. This, despite the fact that the expressive action is indeed a real, tangible movement of energies from the producer to the receiver/consumer — it is not abstract. It is in this space between the models built in the abstracted semiotic space and the real executions that Dialogue, in the extended definition that I propose, occurs. It does not preclude any (most) semiotic models, but is sets the limits of their applicability that arise from the abstraction process that is inherent in language. The Dialogue model looks at these processes, steps in semiotic production as a continua of socially applied protocols which guide (provide a pathway for) energized expression from the Self to the Other — so that semiotic production is clearly not the thing itself, but an abstraction of it. (Van Leeuwen notes this when reflecting on the separation from embodiment that written language imposed on this abstraction process).
more “structural organization”

16 : May : 20098 : October : 2014

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

4 : November : 200829 : December : 2023

place: Prescott, Arizona

netart 2008 – Conch

I spaced-out posting the netarts 2008 selections last November. here’s my brief jury comments:

This year’s netart award was very difficult to close in on. The absolute volume and traffic of data on the network does not seem to be correlated to its ultimate creative vitality. Can it be that the net has reached the saturation point as a means to realize the creative potential of its creators: that the signal-to-noise ratio has reached an asymptotic limit? Or is it merely an approach to the saturation point of the haplessly consuming audience? Is the net only a flooded communications platform in service of global markets? There is perhaps no particular reason to be overly cynical, although for this tech-no-madic curator the life-changes that accompany each further implementation of technologically-mediated connection seem to lose their appeal more and more quickly. For a creative, though, the question remains — how to be evolutionary when taking on the next tool presented by the Venture Techno-capitalists. Where to find something that avoids the clichés of, for example, the ubiquitously pop Web 2.0? There are the occasionally surprising implementations of the 2.0 paradigm, but they are often revealed as the tired exercises in the viral marketing of venture capital dreams. What inspiring sources are out there in the net? Are there any? Perhaps, but only if we leave the material behind to search for the ghost in the machine.

Where is the immaterial, the trace or evidence of the metaphysical, where is it hidden in the technological network of things? Is it actually hidden at all? Or is it simply not there? Has technology, in the form of global networks, banished those inexplicable essences from itself? Technology does have its obvious formative materialized essence, as it is another thing that presents itself to us in our limited sensibilities. But in the dislocated network, far from our touch, what is the apprehended essence, that attractor that keeps us intently focused on the screen. An attractor so compelling and full of gravitas that we chose to limit any change in our point-of-view and remain instead in a motionless screen-bent gaze, in a stationary orbit?

What draws us with this gravity, what draws us into its field of action? We are fascinated by the Light, sure, but our attention is bound by the gravity. The attractor of the machine lies within itself, not within us. We orbit the gravitational center of our own creation, the dense hubris of code. Without code there is only the material gap into which falls our embodied being, levity left to airs and vapors, (hydro)carbon (a)(e)ffluence and other oxidation-reduction reactions.

The grand prize goes to a work that is elegantly inexplicable, conch by the Japanese designer Ｙoshiyuki Katayama. Four topical and simple interactive works explore code as a means to transform time and space into essential visual essences. We may easily orbit the code while watching its realization. And time passes. Such is life.

The runners-up all seem to find simple interactions between code and presentation, leaving some viewers to perhaps simply shrug and move on. Somehow I like to think that these projects represent a search for the network coding of the koan — the Buddhist meditative tool — where the code is an essential step on the path to enLightenment.

Cloud of Clouds by Miguel Leal and Luís Sarmento keeps the sky open for interpretation as it should be, while Ethan Ham’s work, Self Portrait, leaves the self open for interpretation. And, to disagree with the Internet, as does the Disagreeing Internet well, that leaves our orbit around the gravitas of code very much open for not only interpretation but for fundamental questioning and even outright rejection. No more passive agreement with those Venture Capitalists!

Perhaps, when the last flicker comes from the last flat screen, we will understand that code is a chant to exorcise the machine, leaving the ghost (and us!) free to move on to something else. We shall see.

John Hopkins, Prescott, Arizona, USA, 04.Nov.2008

22 : June : 200814 : November : 2015

place: Berlin, Germany

Wiegemesser

Solstice come and gone. joined in the aporee solstice happening down in Kreuzburg last night at 23:59, the official moment of the Solstice. is today’s darkness because of the knowing of the long slide to 21 December? or does it matter? swinging, Light to dark. the performance ritual, reflecting on last year’s foray up Pool Creek Canyon in Dinosaur on that Solstice, does not evoke the energy. and screening the old Solstice videos from Ice Land also do not provide the right resonance. what is the essence of performance. making visible the energies stored up when in stellar regions. or?

the streets are chaotic after Turkey beats Slovakia in the European Cup.

Wolfgang bestows a couple of good Solingen kitchen blades in exchange for computer consulting:

Mini-Yatagan — Windmühlen-Küchen- und Obstmesser “Mini-Yatagan”, konvexe Klinge, nicht rostfrei, aus hochwertigem Kohlenstoffstahl / Carbonstahl, blaugepließtet, Griff aus Kirschbaumholz-Schalen

Klingenlänge: 85 mm

Der Yatagan. Diese Form hat einen langen Weg hinter sich. Dem türkischen Säbel entlehnt, über Frankreich zu uns gekommen, hat dieses praktische Messer immer seinen Platz als Obst-, Gemüse- und Kräutermesser. Mit der Spitze läßt sich beispielsweise ein Apfelkerngehäuse besonders gut herausschneiden und auch die bauchige Schneide und gute Ausgewogenheit erleichtern das Zubereiten von Gemüse, Kräutern und Ähnlichem. Das Windmühlenmesser gehört zur Serie der “blaugepließteten” Messer von Schleifmeister W. Fehrekampf. Das Blaupließten ist das aufwendigste Verfahren der traditionellen Solinger Schleiftechnik.

Man erkennt eine solche Klinge an der Lichtbrechung, die sich in den feinen Schleifschrammen als bläulicher Regenbogenschimmer darstellt.

25 : January : 200812 : October : 2024

place: Berlin, Germany

another TAZ?

tmp.deluxe. call for interest. huh? a large empty space inside a renovated neoclassic building with high ceilings and big windows. controlled on the U1 line by two smiling-but-thuggish youngsters merely flashing their KVB identity cards. as a performance or so. fortuitous to have the right ticket. €2.10 normal tariff. not so cheap. I’m committed to a single round-trip maximum per day. how to do this when a typical day might require getting to four destinations or so. anyway, make it to the tmp.space. they are asking for proposals. slowly the space fills. black clothes, I’m no exception other than wearing faded jeans. there are two of us sitting at a raw chip-board table. call for interest. two large stacks of bluish-white A4 paper, two glass ash trays, one with a few pens cradled in it, one empty. the ubiquitous stench of cigarettes. why is that smell the quintessence of stale? somebody changes the music — electronica for death-metal or so. conversations trip along and don’t seem to get through the aesthetic miasma that is anchored in the stacks of paper and the ashtrays. following the reasoning, following the line. and attempting to insert energy into the situation. having seen and been seen. and a child in a pink t-shirt wanders around. Papa! Papa! making space-testing sounds. to locate herself in the space. doing this, she locates all other receivers in themselves. placing them in the stiff reserve of their aesthetic opinions which they trade in measures, lubricated by wine. locative media while Rome Burns. or is this an exaggeration? more “another TAZ?”

15 : November : 200729 : December : 2023

place: Köln, Germany

netart 2007 – Feraltrade

I was a co-curator again this year for the annual netarts.org 2007 awards. it was a tough year for finding fresh takes under our call for works:

Embodied Praxis – Real Life 2.0

For those of us who use the net, watch TV or SMS friends, we find that we tend to spend a lot of our time peering into one screen or another during our waking hours. Changing images float in front of our eyes as the disruptive sounds and jingles of our prosthetic devices keep us under the spell of the network. Texts flow into focus for as long as we need to retain them, and just as effortlessly gush out again through our fingertips into the ether.

Embodied Praxis – Real Life 2.0 draws on these telematic interactions and examines how art and artists take up these strands and weave them into daily life. However, the projects showcased will not dwell on the ways in which these digital traces are drawn from our lived lives rather they will manifest how our real lives are constructed around these embedded threads; and how their telematic substance is injected into the praxis of daily life.

The projects selected (will) track those nomadic flows as they are propelled across borders and through different languages; producing scenarios – political, commercial and cultural – that net those fluctuating moments in new and distinct cultural spaces. Although we recognize that these specific moments – such as sending/receiving an SMS or a real time interaction in Second Life are primarily transitory in their essence and serve more to de-localize us in non-spaces than locate us in embodied space – we also acknowledge the ways in which these concrete threads actively constitute the social self and, by association, serve to construct the complex fabric of Real Life.

and I wasn’t consistently online to be able to focus as well as I should have, but even still there were some nice projects to be seen, and the honorable-mention list is very interesting.

Grand Prize: Feral Trade by Kate Rich https://www.feraltrade.org/

Again, a complex year for net art, looking at the divergent and still diverging fields of creative production within global networks. This year’s criteria of “Embodied Praxis” was complicated by the arrival of the much-hyped Second Life on the main-stream media stage. But material and very human networking trumped the attenuated virtuality of SL. Making a functional parody of globalized capitalism, Feral Trade seeks to stimulate a direct distribution network that follows the connections of existing social networks. It takes advantage of the un-mediated plurality of human networks and personal connections and constructs a direct affront to the anonymous standardization of global trade. It opens a small crack in the facade of globalization where autonomous collective be-ing can be activated. As a classic example of a TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone), I hope it takes hold to become a permanent presence that de-powers the dominant and monolithic capitalist structure. At the very least, it points out the deep lack in that structure, and this is a critical starting point for evolutionary changes in human relation.

An honorable mention went to Isabelle Jenniches for The Call:

This project emerges out of the long-term network practice of artist Isabelle Jenniches who has in the past worked in a wide variety of creative net-based activities. The particular piece, “The Call” is one of several process-oriented projects she has initiated that depend on the availability of generic user-controlled Internet web-cams. The works are constructed over a long period of time — time spent watching the selected scenario, remotely — life-time spent observing the world. Thousands of images are made during a methodological process of deep-looking through this mediated network eye. The extended seeing and repetitive digital stitching operations on the thousands of gathered images acts to frame a meditative daily routine. The cumulative practice approaches the classical Zen expression — “there is no web-cam, there is no PhotoShop, there is only the Void” — and it arises through the post-Cartesian possibilities of a commonly accessible network interface. Formally recalling David Hockney’s early Polaroid SX-70 time-space collage work, “The Call” is an intimate and intense personal vision of a scope rarely manifest in the click-through eye-candy world of the net.

21 : June : 200711 : June : 2023

place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

right place at the right time

the Solstice, in Echo Park. what more to ask?

walking upstream in Pool Creek Canyon above the abandoned ranch. cross one branch of that major fault, and there the creek is, totally spring fed, gushing from a sand bank in the center line of that huge fault. continue up the canyon in the dry wash. find a cave with a crude lean-to fashioned in it. hung with clothes, boots, and other items. old, very old. at least 50 years, perhaps 75. on the wall are a couple rock paintings. the clothes are working ranch clothes, the rock paintings appear to be authentic. I do not disturb anything, but am very conscious that my boots are making footprints in the sand floor. continuing up the arroyo, the canyon is defined by subtle and massive structural essences of the rock. on the uplifted side of the fault, the underlying limestone shows in the wash. the down-thrown side is at least 1000 feet lower. dramatic geology, good location for field mapping exercises.

sense a mountain lion at one point, the sage is often taller than my head, so, walking through deep brush, scrambling over rockfalls, peering into the numerous caves formed in the eroded sandstone. shooting many images. this is one of the best walks taken in the area. with plenty of cool places to stop, even in the vibrating mid-day zenith of the Solstice sun — overhangs, caves, some Douglas Fir trees, large old junipers, and areas of over-hung canyon wall, rising a few hundred feet above. the absolute depth is about 800-1000 feet, perhaps a bit more. I do not go as far as I can, but stop for 30 minutes to remove fox-tail burrs from pants, socks, and boot liners, where they are beginning to drill into my skin.

Loki does not accompany me.

we later swim/wade upstream to the Green/Yampa confluence and explore. the Yampa seems a few weeks yet too strong to cross. the current is strong even in the hip-deep areas, making a perfect speed for swimming a hard workout in place. the flow of the Yampa is around 2000 (cubic feet per second, cfs), it was twice that at the beginning of the month (see the USGS water data site). in May it can reach up to 20000 cfs on rare occasions — with good snowpack and rapidly increasing spring temps. the Green is half that, and does not vary from around 900 cfs because of the Flaming Gorge Dam. there are a pair of beavers who have found a sheltered cove to hang out in, noshing on aspens up to five inches in diameter which they have cut down and dragged to the river, leaving strange markings in the sand whilst doing so.

the previous day, coming down from the Uinta Mountains, we pass the monstrous phosphate mine which has modified a significant chunk of the south side of the Uintas. I continue work on the Domination of Landscape series to be uploaded later. everywhere in the west is plenty of material for this project. unfortunately.

15 : June : 200722 : November : 2024

place: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Lewis Lake

Yellowstone. For the second day. Struggling with the teenager and such. Which distracts from and distorts the energy of place. Interaction of place and person. The series of images continues domination of landscape which traces the very tangible interactions between human and land. In this case, 21st-century Amurika and the accumulated legacy of a pioneering land which is filling up. To be sure, there is the tribal essence of camping in a tent where nearby there is a very large and possibly very aggressive bull buffalo chewing its cud. And the thermal activities which do remind of the possibility that the planet could simply throw off the species which has raped it in extremis and spend another few million years developing another species for potential evolution. But here we are now, the heart of the Western Frontier Spirit. Old Faithful. The semi-circle boardwalk with bench seats made from plastic 2×4 boards, those extruded from recycled polystyrene bottles courtesy of some corporation, surrounding the low and very trampled-looking tufa deposits. Where the faithful, in their hundreds and perhaps thousands come on a semi-hourly basis to watch an endlessly variable repetitive event, marking a psychic continuation from those pioneering days to the present where the frontier is an unknown and fearsome — with Them bent on prising from Us everything that we’ve built up and enjoyed on the backs of Them over the last 100-some years.

That evolutionary struggle along with another one — the elegant mosquito which will still be around after this country is down-graded to a mere tropical storm from Cat-5 Imperial hurricane of the post-war era. Though moot the question: exactly which war am I referring to? And is a typhoon from the far east next?

23 : April : 200726 : February : 2024

place: Sydney, NSW, Australia

amplification, initial round

Miss a meeting with Angela, got the wrong cafe in Hyde Park, there are two. Sent a SMS, but got no response. Ended up doing more audio work — of the Salvation Army Band in front of the big ANZAC Memorial. Called her, but she must not have had her phone on.

(00:09:21, stereo audio, 18 mb)

Wandered down to Darling Harbor to sit and write about amplification, surrounded by amplified and simulated culture. Hmm, the relationship between amplification and simulation could also be interesting to explore. Where amplification is a (possible) subset of simulation. Because the amplified signal is no longer the thing itself, but a simulation of the thing itself with a change of character, volume in the case of auditory works, intensification in the general sense — the intensification of a particular neurological input signal whatever the input is. At base, electrical — as in the stimulation of the auditory nerves. So, an intensification and sometimes narrowing of frequency (bandwidth) of the signal. Simulation is also about the re-creation of an original signal — one whose characteristics are well known — a re-production of those characteristics.

The better-known the parameters, the better that the signal can be re-produced. Always a reduction, always not the thing itself. Always the reductive. Efficient perhaps, amplifying the essential. But who determines the essential? That is embedded in the technology which is a determinate (determinating) product of the social system. Therein is one source of a significant skewing factor in the presence of these amplified and simulated signals. That the characteristic of these signals are being largely determined by a dominant social system which may or may not be optimized for the individual, or for even the greater good. Because the generating system for these re-productions has a long-term directional inertia coming from the technological production process — the larger the infrastructure (the more generally and specifically) complex the social production system, the greater the inertia, the greater the inertial resistance to changing conditions, the less relevant the amplified signal is to the individual or collective itself.

9 : March : 200731 : December : 2023

place: en route Maastricht - Amsterdam, Netherlands

onwards

short morning with Rod. then off and about in the Light rain. just make the train by a minute despite leaving with plenty of time because of the bus driver shutting the bus down after a couple stops. reason? at the second stop about 40 high school kids get on, packing the bus, a couple stops later, while trying to sardine people onto the bus, he wants them to transfer to the bus behind him. they refuse, so he turns the bus off. and waits. interesting scene.

on to Amsterdam. to de Waag. some serious aerobics up to the third floor reception, am handed a phone and keys, then back over to the flat which sits on the south side of the Nieuwmarkt.

nice place. a single cold beer in the fridge. but the wifi from Waag does not quite cut across to the flat. sort of, but not quite. so I am offline for the weekend perhaps. though Sher says that the network should be accessible at the restaurant in the ground floor of de Waag. I’ll be checking that out tomorrow, for sure. and on for a dinner with Geert and Linda, Calin Dan, and Emile Zile.

The whole problem is one of abandoning a style of critical thought that is the very essence of our theoretical culture, but that in some sense comes under the head of a prior history and life; of carrying out, just as we have carried out a deterministic analysis of a deterministic society, an indeterministic analysis of an indeterministic society, a society that is fractal, random, exponential, one of critical mass and extreme phenomena, wholly dominated by relations of uncertainty. — Jean Baudrillard

9 : December : 200617 : April : 2024

place: Prescott, Arizona

the gift of attention

in the days preceding the material frenzy that so characterizes the holiday in the consuming world, I ponder my own relation to the holiday. what could be nicer than receiving a gift? something usable in the course of survival or something completely use-less except for the aesthetic energy it slow-releases to the eye or ear over time. or something that touches on the architecture of the relationship of giver to receiver.

for me the highest gift in the sped-up road-warrior world of 21st century amurika would be the gift of attention. now, I’m not talking about the obsessively sought attention of media-to-star, the ego-centric attraction of appearances, of shiny and slick surfaces, of painted-over cardboard facades, of glimmering particles that exert the false-attraction of material desires. nor the gloming and needy self-centered-ness that requires vampiric sustenance.

but more the binary and reciprocated exchange of attentive presence where the floating self might turn full-faced to the other and in Light and in Gravity — making Light, making Gravity — the two beings take up temporary residence in each others field-of-attraction and field-of-reflection. this is the gift of life, lived life-time shared. attentively shared, focused, concentrated. a gift without value, except for the value of life-time passed. a commodity in limited supply for each, such as the Moirae decree. no higher value of gift except for the giving of life to save a life.

but what is the essence of this gift of attention? in the exchange, sharing of life-time, the self is open, and in that open-ness, adsorbs the be-ing of the other. in this, the self is changed, evolves, realizes the absolute character of other-ness, and what a precious gift it is — to provide the opportunity of change. and between this change, and the apprehension of difference, occurring in an unstable space of the not-knowing, creative spark flashes. and we become more than we previously were.

9 : February : 200625 : May : 2012

place: Chino Valley, Arizona

Sisu*

The documentary Fire and Ice about the Finnish-Russian Winter War reminds and reminds of an essence underlying Finland like the Pre-Cambrian grano-diorite shield it sits upon. I often ran across the echoes of this particular event in strange ways. In the oldest generation in Finland, as in much of Europe, is the haunted look, more pronounced though carefully hidden, from eyes that have seen war. The movie was recently filmed in Finland and contains scenes of both Russian and Finnish re-enactors, along with interviews from veterans and citizens who experienced the incredible and atrocious conditions. The winter of 1939 was the second coldest since 1828. Soldiers hit in the heart, with cut circulation, immediately froze in the contortions of death. Finnish machine gunners went insane after killing thousands of Russians, waves storming across open fields in the initial weeks of the war. And so it goes. *Sisu — Finnish for guts and valor.

25 : October : 20057 : February : 2022

place: Chino Valley, Arizona

reflections on the classroom

to the IDC list

sotto voce: Although, as a University educator — I agree with John’s appraisal of the condition of the contemporary educational institution (having taught in around 50 institutions in Europe and the US), there is this critical area to consider: yes, the classroom has not undergone a physical re-design, but perhaps it doesn’t need one. When the door closes, it has the potential to be a space for transcendent encounters between the participants IF the oppressive effects of the fear that is instilled by the dominant educational system in both student and teacher — the fear of nonconformity, the fear of personal idiosyncrasies, and the fear of the unknown — if the fear is mitigated. I believe this fear is a result of the accumulation of pathological (unbalanced) relationships that are mandated between humans when operating in hierarchic situations. If, as a facilitator more “reflections on the classroom”

8 : October : 200530 : November : 2015

place: Prescott, Arizona

shifts and changes

three months out from accident/surgery and all reports are positive from Dr. Papadopoulos. he was busier than last appointment, but he gave the essential prognosis that I can wean myself from the brace and swim, hike, and so on. good deal. it comes off as much as possible. which may be a slow process, it has grown to fit, muscles succumbing to laze and sprawl in the molded plastic casing.

retro-fitting the travelog — now back to December 2000. about half-way, though the first half is probably twice the volume of text than the latter half. doubt I will get the whole thing done. it is a legacy project.

pondering how it is that I have not brought more relevant experiences into this travelog. the last decade of my trajectory is relatively singular, and has crossed the paths of a great many of those who are greater in the eyes of the mass pay-per-view. nothing rubbed off. or only a little.

it could be that, as with the subject of my inquiry — the continuum of human relation — I tend to take a relationist rather than a reductionist approach. that is, allowing a text (better yet, speaking!) to generate from the complex and dynamic space of the human connection rather than making a series of overarching reductions of that Other, through the encounter. hmmm. it is this pathway which almost requires an abandonment of social relevance, except as a chance by-product. there will be unprecedented outcomes.

it is exactly this reductionist approach which brings massive social rewards: the compressing/re-stating/re-creation of lived presence as completely embedded in the social system. indeed, this IS the essence of fame. the generation of parallel (yet seemingly convergent) pathways which appear known, or previously experienced (social structure is predicated on shared experience). when there is an encounter with an Other who, on examination, does not share any of the abstracted pathways of life-experience, we feel uncomfortable, distanced, and afraid. through the “getting-to-know” process — a process of trying to locate within the Self and the Other common pathways and patterns of being — if we are not successful in finding any shared pathways, then the social dimension of the relation is doomed. we are forced to simply be in the moment, in a fearful and unknowable sequence of moments that have no predictable outcome. “breaking-the-ice” — looking for the flow of shared life by breaking through the stasis and reification of socialization (judging on looks, on possessions). looking at life passing on around through the (distorted) socialized eye. seeing only the known, blocking out any confrontation of the unknown.

a couple Latino guys come to deliver the firewood. my ears are wooden. hard to understand them. not able to dredge up some English, and not used to hearing the Spanish, though I can understand when one of them translates to the other.

27 : August : 200514 : November : 2015

place: Prescott, Arizona

#47

Scrolling through the personal book collection installed in the mostly unused office that I constructed for my father years ago when the house was quite new. After reading Wolfe, it’s hard to look at a sheet of paper: virtual or crinkled. The border of autobiography and fiction is a powerful dialectic to play along. Always sure to raise hackles of feral anger in dissociation when the images are built from eyes that see essences. It is the essence that is the only thing valuable enough to comment on, eh? Appearances which point to essences are the best.

Those who are motionless on the wandering earth: the voyagers. Those who flee over the motionless earth: the stay-at-homes. But those who flee over the wandering earth, and those who are motionless on the motionless earth: what should they be called? — J. M-G. LeClezio

11 : June : 200511 : October : 2024

place: The Mission, San Francisco, California

places, sounds, words

make a blitz into downtown to meet Sirpa and check out her exhibition in the Mission. we met nearby at her friend Alice’s home and drive down to the gallery, the Mission 17 Gallery. parking is a hassle, with my boat-length pick-up. not used to driving it in compact urban settings. walk down Mission, thinking that this setting is almost identical to Brixton in London when I was there with Pete. urban complexity, noise, confusing information flows, mixed cultural impulses, chaotic surface intersections and orientations.
more “places, sounds, words”

22 : May : 200531 : December : 2023

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”

6 : May : 200525 : April : 2013

place: Chino Valley, Arizona

on lawns

mowing lawns, in the expanse of time that is the summer of childhood. the noise, wonder deafness isn’t a factor these days, the smell, well, the smell of cut grass. it is the smell of summer. that and watermelon in the lightning-bug twiLight. but the mowing, the lawn. this projection on nature, this habitus of class, measure of English rectitude. social status determined by the status of greenery around the house. manor or tract suburbia. essence of control. and with this control of the landscape comes subtle and not-so-subtle shifts. consider, for example, as environments shift to ever more homogeneous conceptualized ideals, species which are more adaptable to that particular ideal explode in number, while more specialized species are squeezed out. this is why there is a proliferation of ‘pest’ species — deer, raccoons, starlings, Canada geese — the so-called “Wal-Mart” effect. all the fuel, time, and effort used in primping lawns would be better used for (at least) simply defining (controlling) a small area of the total available land used for housing clusters, with the rest used as natural environmental buffers. developers generally hate this concept. rather using 1-2 acre lot grids evenly spaced over the entire available land. ah well, seems there is no limit to the greed and avarice of said developers, so, what to do? so far, if what I have seen in the West in the last 30 years is any measure. it’s hopeless. more humans, more pressure on the environment. period.

4 : May : 200429 : December : 2023

place: Suomenlinna, Finland

locative?

smartmoblogsociallocativefictiongpsteredmedia creatures feeding one on the other, in a frenzy of “what’s next that’s cool” and built for speed. (which ultimately will move ‘it’ on to the next “Next Big Thing.”) seems like another wave of meme-hype reverberating around the extraordinarily limited space of global telecom networks (in collaboration with military satellites). is the price to be paid so removed and hard to comprehend? seems so. I have run across exactly zero critical words about this phenom. instead a flood of vacuous phrases and spin terms that are kept afloat in a social sea by the flatulent buoyancy of affluence, global capital, and ex-military industry. STILL. “radical decentralization” for autonomous consumption of text, image, audio and video — the re-presented and ultimately consumable world. autonomy for re-presentation and re-production of reality — one that fills the belly with gas and the head with language peddled by those same tired techno-utopian spin-doctors. technology always looks its ubiquitous best in the eyes of the über-class. as I click through the verbiage at locative.net (no longer extant) it feels like RedHerring from 1999 or so — so much interlocking terminology leading in a head-rich circle of hype-logic. headmap drops phrases like “everything in the world, animate and inanimate, abstract and concrete, has thoughts attached,” “every place has emotional attachments you can open and save,” and “life flows into inanimate objects.” and behind these words (more and more of them) there is no awareness of or anticipation that there was/is an essence that is a substrate for knowledge and abstracted/systematized human apprehension. that something comes before knowing. and the vitality-draining construction of a Babylonish Tower is an ongoing exercise that society never quite purged from its mind. the path that re-creation bumbles along is not the same one as creation. not even in the same forest.

When people consider the dangers of the chaos of a free intensely networked spatially augmented world, they should also consider that like all technological advances it offers tools to both sides of any argument. ‘ends appropriate means’ may seem ominous but the ends can just as well be social advancement. Even in a critical situation, disaster response and recovery in a world of spontaneous peer to peer mesh networks, running evolved social software, seems like a sane option for coordination of local efforts to recover and help from outside. The homeland security initiative raised the point that a citizen owned spatially aware communications network could be invaluable in a crisis. — headmap.org [ed: dead link] ideolog

what kind of crisis? when shopping is compromised? what can be meant by the terms ‘crisis’ and ‘homeland security’ being used in the same context? and, invaluable to whom? a threat to the status quo? or is there a radical suggestion that the masters tools be used to displace the master? funny, though, the effect of wielding a tool is perhaps the same, regardless of the wielder. that is, on the wielder, not on the hapless victim!

and what if, just what if these technological deployments are subsequently used for command-and-control, will everyone be surprised and taken aback? gee, we never imagined…

and the other core issue — whether you believe that all things are connected by a relatively un-knowable (or un-circumscribable) substratum or whether you consider that phenomenal existence is populated by discrete and completely independent objects, actions, and beings. that driving an SUV in Chicago rush hour has absolutely no connection to the presence of an M1 Abrams tank parked on a bridge outside of Falluja. that typing these words on this keyboard into this device has no connection with degradation of ground water in the Kwale region of Kenya from titanium mining.

2 : May : 200411 : March : 2016

place: Soumenlinna, Finland

soap bubbles

soap bubbles drift past my window. waiting to catch a ferry into town to meet Sanna for lunch at the Atheneum. the summer ferry schedule is on now, so three-per-hour for much of each day. takes the timing aspect away. Maria and David drop in for a bit yesterday evening.

the impending travel to ram5 is on mind. presenting a short set of ideas “the human need for open source space” as a participant presentation in “the practice of open source architecture.” fragments include:

in joining this workshop, I faced the issue of bridging between a series of phrases which I have yet to completely understand as a lived praxis, and my own understanding and praxis. This process is an essential part of open source, where a distributed system facilitates a set of flows that are not always subjectively related. In order to find a pathway across those often uncomfortable spaces of representational difference, one must sometimes let go of the actual symbolic content:

terminologies (need to remain open!) need to be fuzzy concepts that can accept input, crossover, and disruption from other directions.

and rather than a critique-filled, Luddite, anti-technological call for caution or complete rejection of these technologies which the military developed years ago and are only now trickling down for the intelligentsia to play with, (observation of this effect prompted Timothy Leary to come up with the conspiracy theory that “the KGB and the CIA collaborated to develop LSD and personal computers to keep the middle class intelligentsia busy and out of trouble”)

I would like to invoke a remembering of what these social systems are built upon, and what the goals might be in using them.

for me it’s still a question whether it is possible to deconstruct (or pick the locks on) the Masters house using the Masters tools. picking the lock is possible, but who wants to live in the Masters house anyway, it’s got a bad vibe and a bad smell in it.

recalling the basis of Open Source: the human exchange platform.

linguistic-based exchange is only the socialized framework, it is necessary to go beyond that mediated social space into the space of real energy exchanges.

this includes the abstracted space of finance (global capitalism being a subset)

Language, which includes

does not cover

split between linguistic/abstracted systems of exchange (which include legal codices, symbolic (vs real) monetary value exchange systems) and the ‘real’ space of energized exchange

(why con-fluence and con-ference and dancing afterwards are the meat of con-nection and com-munity)

should not end with movements of abstracted symbolic re-presentations of reality, but should be rooted in the real exchange… the adoption of these abstractions as reality is a core cause of alienation that is giving a very desperate edge to contemporary social systems

we must regain the root. (there must be an embodied corollary to each abstracted notion adopted)

this root is post-materialist, energized exchange that transcends at least at some points the limitations of abstracted re-presentations of connection and dialogue

it is clear that many implementations, sailing high on the hype of the dot.com days, are now merely the tools of state command and control.

we need situations that re-energize human connection regardless of the particular representative symbolic content. this is the essence of open source, it is more than a bazaar, more than a market place, more than any socialized system. it is about embodied be-ing and full-tilt presence, nothing more nothing less.

let’s dance!

Andrew shows up, along with Alison and John, we watch the neighborhood cat prance in with a live rat or voll, play with it, and theorize on the range of possible outcomes.

28 : May : 200322 : August : 2015

place: Boulder, Colorado

womanifesto

my entry for the exhibition womanifesto Procreation/Postcreation in Bangkok that Varsha asked me to join — turns out that she uses the simple entry as a main element of the exhibition poster, invites, and publication (it’s the spiral line of text)!

____________________________________________

procreation:

creativity is energy-in-motion

the essence of motion, movement, is energy

the quickening of the spirit

a look around to apprehend the Other

a dialogue begins

small flows of energy between two

fundamental creation, life

one plus one equals three

primal phenomenon

__________________________________________________

2 : February : 200314 : November : 2015

place: Boulder, Colorado

hearts of darkness

No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence — that which makes its truth, its meaning — its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live as we dream — alone. — Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

13 : July : 200211 : June : 2023

place: Grand Junction, Colorado

infra-red radiation

helping Dona move into her new apartment. a ride up the river. mid-day. record high temps — 105 Fahrenheit. on the bike path, each piece of pavement in the sun, re-radiating a shimmering solid exhalation of unlimited infra-red expanse. no limit to heat. sun. the essence of infinity radiations. of all. (which is life).

30 : January : 200225 : April : 2013

place: Boulder, Colorado

sun-fire

snow again last night. cold, but not too cold. sunshine makes the cold much less penetrating. we bask our life in the Light of that sun. it does bind all things. how has it come that humans can be so easily turning away to stare into a derived and re-created fire. the essence is lost, first of all! essence is not even considered, only the readings of primary sense. readings of reproduction. readings of re-presentation.

felt like I was alive for a moment. that in the midst of folding a black tee-shirt from the dryer, that everything, that everything everywhere shimmered. shivered. nice.

but the relationship of that shimmer and the continuum of be-ing is bisected with. what?

friends offer this possibility of the expression of the self in a form that may be more closely aligned with the array of filters that one sets up internally to deal with what life delivers. laughing for a whole evening with Nick & Deb (above) and Dave.

1 : November : 200119 : January : 2018

place: Trondheim, Norway

essential motion

One more month in Europe. Juggling airlines reservations.

He felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think. … The world was outside of him, around him, before him, and the speed with which it kept changing made it impossible for him to dwell on any one thing for very long. Motion was of the essence. — Paul Auster

Here, another different workshop. Immersion with two students. Allowing things to float, travel, reaching points of departure and arrival simultaneously. Hours of exchange. And not on the road. Too short a trip. On to Oslo. And on and on and on. Concert for New York City. The spectacles of stardom. And the spin makes the world stop.

30 : December : 200012 : July : 2013

place: Alamo Lake State Park, Arizona

stars

saguaro, creosote bush, red-tailed hawk, Venus near the crescent Moon. so many stars in the sky and so cold the dry air, jumping out of the RV in my underwear to pee in the middle of the night I am crying as I look upwards. one is reminded that those who watch the stars are not to be trifled with. there is a depth in that occupation. or pre-occupation. and that things pre-verbal are essential. of essence. of course.

24 : March : 199817 : June : 2011

place: en route Linz - Salzburg, Austria - München - Frankfurt - Offenbach - Rösrath, Germany

ice trains

Another early morning train, to München on to Frankfurt, then to Offenbach for the afternoon visiting the Hochschule für Gestaltung there, then on through Siegen to Rösrath to visit with Volker for a day. This movement. Last night vibrating inwardly, feelings electric again (there was a window there that opened regarding mortality versus immortality — walking behind Tom and Christa out in a village near Linz, heading for the country, I suddenly recalled that I had not been aware of my own being, I had forgotten to be, and then came a flooding roar that something could have happened in that state of not being within my own life, I could have had an accident!) But I did not. No use describing it. Salzburg. Another fragment of intensity, of energy, happened after the lecture yesterday, riding the strassenbahn back into town, I see the mountains far away, through the opposite window of the tram, they are small and though covered with snow, are pink from the industrial haze.

The vision leaps out at me. Recalling the instance that I have often recounted in class. Walking up to the bus stop one morning in Iceland, I have not really woken up, I am moving, but only the body is on motion, the mind is off, still, dull. Standing at the bus stop, it is at the top of a hill, there are some buildings around, but there is a rather unobstructed view plus-or-minus of the entire horizon which spans a long ridge of mountains on the Reykjanes peninsula, Mt. Esja sitting somberly to the north, and other low ranges and peaks scattered to the east and north, a few fragments of ocean are also visible. I am turning slowly, gaze traversing the critical intersection of these two rough half-spaces. The energy starts somewhere in the belly, at least that is where I first notice it, in the belly, maybe the solar plexus, it is rising in the body, and at the same time, the mind begins to fire. There is the immediate realization that the seeing, the apprehension, and absorption of Light energy through the eyes is charging my body with strong forces, fields of power. I become aware of living, being alive, being. As Rilke termed it, superabundant life began to trace each edge, each separation, while at the same time all things were fused into a unitary essence that circulated freely through all parts of my body. Yep. München. Snow here. Bright outside the windows of this ICE train. Moving again at high speeds.

19 : September : 199719 : January : 2017

place: Boulder, Colorado

the traveler

Met with Mark this afternoon. After my Friday afternoon Critical Thinking class. One of the significant reverberations of Open-X was his presence and our meeting and subsequent dialogues which developed, are developing. He is an artist who has made transitions from medium-to-medium, and has come away with a depth of experiential insight that is among the most principled-understanding data-sets I have run across in my networking experience. Our sentiments seem to align in similar directions, probably because of my leanings to the written word, and his to networking and Web-based possibilities. An over-simplification. How energies align is rather something of a mystery for me. How last week at ARS, there was a massive alignment of human essences, bipolar networking molecules, magnetic bio-phage dipoles, whatever. In rare dis-position against the cult of the object that still dominates the cultural industry sector. Definitely the unit for alignment is the individual. Networking. The minimum unit of human interaction is…

Somehow, I feel like I am still traveling, though I can root here in Colorado for three more months. There came a realization last week that I am a member of a sub-group of artist-educator-networkers who are mobile (by choice and by force in recombinant measure), transient, and have this in common. But this common thread is far more powerful than would be immediately evident. As buried in each of these folks is an essential open-ness to the Other. Travelers almost always have this trait. A natural curiosity about the Others met on the road. Combined with a creative spirit, these people can be fiery teachers, not beholden to local institutions, allegiances, or structures. Speaking a tongue unwarped by local political dialects and desires, expressing what is beyond the seen (what is over the horizon), moving, constantly in paced motion, blurring edges and leaping barriers with presence of will.

The ignorant are tied to their native land, the mediocre consider themselves citizens of the world, but only the wise realize that they are a stranger everywhere. — Motto of Los Straniero journal

25 : July : 199723 : June : 2014

place: Akureyri, Iceland

solstice-to-solstice

A short note about the installation that I just opened yesterday as part of the Akureyri ListaSumar 1997 (Summer Arts Festival). It is an extension of the performance series solstice-to-solstice: a naming of the Light of Being [it takes a few minutes for the java slide-show to upload] and the intro on the wall looks something like this:

This installation is a visual exploration of a life-path — a braided passage that is both material and spiritual. As Light forms, informs, and sustains Life, its influence on the large and small is whole and complete. The eye absorbs this energy and that inspiration becomes material essence for Being. These images are a meditation, a reviving of memory, a remembering, a potential source for the imagination and, most of all, a visual naming in the fundamental sense. Naming is a basic creative process that brings the material world into being, it forms a matrix, an armature, upon which this personal visual history and memory is built. These images span a Cartesian time from June 21 1995 to June 21 1996, they span a wide Cartesian space. Outside of the Cartesian, they span steps of eye and heart that leave the Cartesian behind, and are suspended in a new construct of community, network, and being.

Probably a measure of bullshit, but the 40-meter long strip of images that span the space impressed the hell out of my back, leaving me crippled and craving more of the pain-killers that the Doc prescribed. One step forward, two steps back. A photographer from the national paper came in to do a portrait for upcoming coverage of the town’s summer art festival, and during the opening, the most retro and pin-headed critic (no, I can’t honestly call him a critic — should simply say guy-who-fills-columns-with-pointless-drivel) employed by the newspaper ran through the installation. The poor old fellow knows little about art, and nothing about photography. I recall the review he wrote for an exhibition I did some years back which was of as much critical value as an equal quantity of paper pulp destined to clean a baby’s arse. Some people don’t know when to quit. The only positive point is that a bad review from him pretty much confirms that an exhibition is at least interesting.

16 : June : 199715 : November : 2013

place: Tornio, Finland

soon come

Kati and Harri make vihta birch bundles out of fresh green birch twigs, wrapped tightly together for the sauna tonight. This is one part of the Finnish sauna tradition that is very special, whipping the body with these vihta that have soaked in water a bit. The smell is electric, the same smell that invades and clears the head on a walk outside at this time of year. Birch life-essence exploding everywhere along with the mosquitoes that, though not yet exploding quite like the birch, are, as the Jamaicans say, soon come. The energy of the Solstice is building (it seems like there will be a full moon as well, which is just what we need to heighten the astronomically measured crux).

11 : June : 199715 : January : 2024

place: Tornio, Finland

productivity

Yet more days later. I have finished two new video works (mama, where are you going and memory of three infinite half-spaces), very different works, partly as a result of exploring the possibilities of the AVID digital editing system, and partly from the limited amount of raw material that I brought with me. I am wishing I had brought the collection of dinner tapes this time, as there are plenty of machines to do the heavy editing needed to finish that CD. But, here I am. So far I have learned a tremendous amount being around the others, it is really a luxury to be with other working artists when there is a relatively relaxed atmosphere that is free of agendas … The days blend directly into the nights which blend into the days. A seamless continuation of varying Lighting effects. I like working late into the morning when there is a special quietness that soaks the air.

Today I pick up the WinNT server from the computer department. Another project to get it running! We hope to get a REAL AUDIO server up for some weeks, although I see there is much to be done just to get the NT server up and cruising as I would like. But the real state of mind is rather indeterminate. Digital oscillations are interposed with human movement and various ocular stimuli arising from solar phenomena. Yesterday a huge sun-ring imposed itself across a quarter of the sky. This evening, now onto midnight, swallows are reeling across the sky and between the buildings. Outside the window which is wide open to catch the evening breeze and help dispel the interior new-building air pollution, there is a dirt and gravel space and then an elementary school building that workmen have been almost totally gutting over the course of the last week-and-a-half. New windows, new desks, and who knows what else. The first day we were here, there was a dumpster full to overflowing with birch desks which were thankfully carted off by locals before being discarded. The movement across life is full in the summer of this place. Winter is the Other. Activity is vigorous though tempered by the luxurious languor of warmth. The birch trees are filling the air with a sensual tree-essence that one smells to one degree or another all the time, and their trunks are warm from the flow of sap. A week ago they had no leaves, and today they are full and filling vast Cartesian spaces with detailed energies.

31 : August : 199612 : October : 2024

place: Stamford, Connecticut

Trane

Here for one more day. A picnic in the afternoon. Still no time to retrospect on the full events of the last few weeks. So it goes. But always this preoccupation with the theme of mediation. It seems rooted in the basic tendency of humans to use the material world as a cover, a carapace against the eventual confrontation with the spiritual — that which is not material, that which is energy (which is all!). There is a rebalancing that must come. An acceptance of the material, acceptance of the hypostasis — the coming-into-the-material-world — existing as a being-in-the-world. (As John Coltrane jams from the CD-player). Always astonishing music comes from him. Long after his death, his spirit rings around the world. Mediated or simply impregnating, quickening, the material essence of life with spirit motions … The studio recording of 26 September 1962 of In a Sentimental Mood with Trane teamed up with Duke Ellington on piano, Aaron Bell on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums is a piece that has resonated in my heart for years. The poignant emotion brimming through the sounds from the opening to the uncertain ending holds an entire life in its brief 4 minutes 15 second duration. Always a pleasure listening to Miles, Trane, and other jazz with Randy — he is an accomplished jazz pianist himself, and even was playing with a band back when he lived in Chicago … Speaking of which I discovered that I share the birthday of the late jazz great Lester Young.