where is meaning in a system so completely out of balance?
speed of adjustment too slow,
gyroscopic inertia too high,
center of gravity external,
lightening world spinning, all in a cosmos of dark energies and dark matters: occultation.
at once, briefly, looking up, with the eyes of god: plasma of blood reading plasma of star.
and then, exsanguination and final uplift into the approaching Void
hypostatic inversion, return return return
acceleration. what does this look like? bodycage pressing seat of heart, spine once shattered, now in tensile repair. static, greymetal frames cage neuronal pathways. acceleration of bodily demise is not motion, it is stasis.
it is time.
to make do. quickly. traverse no zenith. accelerate.
Any landscape is so dense with evidence and so complex and cryptic that we can never be assured that we have read it all or read it aright. The landscape lies all around us, ever accessible and inexhaustible. Anyone can look, but we all need to see that it is at once a panorama, a composition, a palimpsest, a microcosm; that in every prospect there can be more and more that meets the eye.
James Miller‘s concept of “living systems” emphasizes that all such systems—from cells to landscapes to societies—share common scale-independent patterns of organization and processes as well as divergent features. As initially articulated in an editorial by Miller in 1956 in the then-new journal Behavorial Science:
Our present thinking-which may alter with time-is that a general theory will deal with structural and behavioral properties of systems. The diversity of systems is great. The molecule, the cell, the organ, the individual, the group, the society are all examples of systems. Besides differing in the level of organization, systems differ in many other crucial respects. They may he living, nonliving, or mixed; material or conceptual; and so forth.
In the context of landscapes, this approach aligns with systems thinking by focusing on how ecosystems, organisms, and human activities interact within larger networks, and are themselves comprised of smaller and smaller networks. A landscape may be seen as a living system with a complex of nested subsystems, where elements like nutrient cycles, energy flows, and information exchanges are interconnected. These interactions contribute to emergent properties and systemic behaviors, underscoring the need to consider the whole landscape when analyzing environmental changes and implementing management strategies. Augmenting or supplanting those more empirical methods, we believe that artistic, creative, imaginative, embodied, and other refined sensory-based processes can very effectively address and engage not only the astounding complexity, but the raw and inspiring beauty of these systems. Key to what may be a singular holistic ‘understanding’ of a landscape is focused and sustained observation that is aware of the scalar similarities and differences.
Hayden recognized the profound value of William Henry Holmes‘ drawings, though he did not formally recognize the other artists who produced documentary drawings on the expeditions, He reserved most of his praise for William Henry Jackson, the photographer who documented so expansively the landscapes of the American West setting the creative precedent for the likes of Ansel Adams, Richard Misrach, Robert Adams, Willy Sutton, and the many others who followed.
Our death is our wedding with eternity.
What is the secret? “God is One.”
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don’t call all these lights “the Light of God”;
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
…Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.
Vitray-Meyerovitch, Eva de. Rûmî and Sufism. Sausalito, CA: Post-Apollo Press, 1987.
I’m no photographer. I take pictures, mostly rather banal pictures: re-creations, re-presentations, documentations of reality. When asked, I tell people that I photograph who I am with, what I am doing, and where I am. Suitably self-centric for the pseudo-artist.
Yes, I show up, with camera. And back when there was a physical craft involved, I excelled in the production of fine archival prints, and I was called a Master Printer. Over the years I taught many courses on the craft: master printing, photographic history, and photography. I have thousands of vintage silver, silver/sepia, and silver/selenium prints that have sat in boxes for the decades since I was last in a wet darkroom, plying that craft.
I still hold onto a selection of superb enlarger lenses, though the last enlarger I had access to—in the darkroom that I built for my father—I gave to the local college back in 2002. Their once-vibrant photography program collapsed a few years later. So much for craft, gotta sell those lenses.
Not only that, I still can’t get a true horizontal horizon line! Dammit! Simple composition, strictures I never liked, were not transcended to a level where they could intentionally be disposed of entirely.
After five years of not carrying an analog 35mm camera, shooting only miniDV video from 2000 through 2006, I picked up a DSLR with a lens that gradually reduced itself over more than a decade’s use to a piece of garbage. And forget a clean CCD sensor. It’s worse than in the ‘old times’ with spurts of Dust-Off and manually spotting (or ‘re-touching’) negatives and prints with Spotone and tiny paint brushes. CCDs manifest every dust speck as large dark circles on the screen (and in print). Got a clear sky? Guaranteed to be covered in more-or-less distinct circular blobs. I finally upgraded to a true professional-grade DSLR a few years back—as usual, behind the current mirror-less technology—always several steps behind any state-of-the-art. The only time I was near that was when I was shooting with the two Nikon F2a bodies and a selection of decent lenses that my father generously handed down to me back in the late 1970s.
The successful Kickstarter campaign in 2013 to acquire a high-end large-format printer ended during Covid when—after seven years of pointless printing—one nozzle got clogged and I didn’t immediately address the issue to fix it. The printer is now a 250-pound paperweight. I could perhaps revive it, but that would require buying a full set of inks, a $2500 investment that might not pay off in the end. I only sold a handful of prints total, and gave away many more than that, by far.
At this point, my images are hardly ‘collectible’ and so the only photographic medium I am using currently is this travelog. That will not change for the duration—despite this virtual world already jam-packed with trillions of images—until the energy winds down, and all archives become cold stardust fodder.
These are wild dreams. Yet since, now a week ago, on me, as I stood on the height of St. Peter’s, they have ruled my imagination. I have chosen my boat, and laid out my scant stores. I have selected a few books; the principal are Homer and Shakespeare. But the libraries of the world are thrown open to me—and in any port I can renew my stock. I form no expectation of alteration for the better; but the monotonous present is intolerable to me. Neither hope nor joy are my pilots—restless despair and fierce desire of change lead me on. I long to grapple with danger, to be excited by fear, to have some task however slight or voluntary for each days fulfillment. I shall witness all the variety of appearance, that the elements can assume—I shall read fair augury in the rainbow — menace in the cloud—some lesson or record dear to my heart in everything. Thus around the shores of deserted Earth, when the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes, angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eye of the Supreme, will behold the tiny bark, freighted with Verney, The Last Man. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Last Man.
What a vortex it is: the overt seduction of the body. When facing dissolution, it is all that cradles any life, all that may be apprehended. All that holds the eye. All that is carried through neurons, filling mind with bright sparks: spinning carborundum on steel. The vortex draws the attention on.
The way out, the exit, is over there, beyond the risk of failure, beyond the passing satisfaction of bringing some thing to Life. Slipped into simplified be-ing. With a silence that only breaks for critique, eh? Critique? What’s that? Art, merely a display of excess energy, yet to be sublimated, annihilated by time.
Speaking to that potential child, gone; speaking among voices in the head; speaking to power and to glory; speaking of the juncture where life turned from the foreseen, and then seemed irretrievable, that life itself was almost gone. So, to encourage the lioness in her heart, reminding of the potential of any turn to the unknown. That her expressing to the world, in any form, is a path to healing. That she is no failure. Despite constant demeaning words applied to forming Self. Years of oppression calcified some facets of brightness. But the sheer intensity of her Light-full spirit prevails.
Gravity has arrived in its force, once again; and once again, profundity and levity have gone, if ever they occupied this corner of the cosmos. Time steps away, leaving eyes empty and sights, once focused up ahead, obscured by a dense fog.
Writing forms no way out. Yet here, again, I find myself writing rather than shoveling — rather than moving earth and rocks — grounded in a way that I have not been before. Nomadic becomes a faint word, sun-bleached and hard to read, painted on a wooden wall, blistered. Lizards thereon are sluggish even in the warming spring sunshine. Easy to catch but more, easier to have eye contact with. Eye-contact proves the reptilian: locative mediation.
“What is it?” we ask, meaning what is its name? This odd quirk of the human mind: Unless we can name things, they remain for us only half-real. Or less than half-real: nonexistent. A person without a name is nobody. A human’s name can become more important than his person. A plant, an animal, a thing without a name is no thing — nothing. No wonder we humans like to think that in the beginning was — the Word. What word? Any word. Any word at all, anything rather than the silence and terror of the nameless.” —
Abbey, Edward. Abbey’s Road. New York, NY: Plume, 1991.
Plowing (ploughing) through Abbey this time, years since reading “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” his writing seems dated, depressing, even dark. So much of the landscape that he passed through is (de)evolved, so much of what he prognosticated about the Southwest, at the hands of corrupt politicians and developers has materialized like a cancer across the land. The forever-expansion, development-is-good, it-creates-jobs mantra that is chanted by deeply unholy men (and women). Bringing 4000+ square-foot pseudo-adobe MacMansions to dot the landscape along with scaled-up vehicular afterbirth: Hummers in every five-car garage. Although there are places one might go and on a middle-scale—meaning the easily visible—local scale, to the uninitiated eye, the natural system seems untouched. But with any consideration of scientific data—atmospheric systems, plant and animal ecosystems, and hydrological systems are being irretrievably altered. What of the domination of a species that will destroy most of the other macro-species only to live on briefly in an impoverished environment: soon to succumb to a viral celebration in the host of hosts. Definitely, catch it while you can. Take the last road trips around before gas costs what it should and the only way to get out of Dodge will be on foot. And the only way to survive the plague is through a slow and costly counter-evolution.
At any rate, this is a frog (possibly a Canyon Tree frog – Hyla arenicolor). But note the incredible coloration. The green exactly matches a particular lichen that grows on the granite in that area. The pinkish blush of the oxidized feldspar in the granite. There were four of them literally stuck to the side of a large smooth boulder on Mint Wash. I was sitting opposite from them, having lunch with Marianne, about 6 feet (2 meters) away, and at first I thought they were phenocrysts in the granite, but then saw they were frogs. This particular one was the only one I could get close enough to make an image of, it was crouched on a relatively reasonable ridge. The other three were glued to vertical (overhanging!) smooth surfaces, but there was a 2-meter deep hole in the creek bed, full of water immediately below them. So, this one had to do. The beautiful beast is about 1.5 inches (3 cm) long.
Give me your time, give me your space, your eyes, your ears: this is the mantra of the Self. I give you my time, I give you my space: this is the mantra of the Self, the self released from the bonds of egoism. I give you my self.
Watching tears well up and begin to fall. Where do they come from? And what will become of them? Feeling tears well up and fall. It’s a bit of a puzzle, the neurons that resonate between two (or more) bodies. There are the shared events of social adhesion: nationalistic synergies, mass tragedies, and the spectacles of sensual attraction. These are not the true resonances of the soul. Souls play together in the strangest of circumstances.
And networks proceed at the speed of life. Something I’ve been saying for years.
stepping outside, iris closed.
immediately the Milky Way is apparent, despite Light streaming
from windows in the house.
through glass. electric Light, a stream from the beginning.
through wires. and wires.
crossing huge spaces in the dark landscape. Strung
from towers that are giant beasts striding, frozen across those
spaces. leading to the dams. or to the power stations.
where the earth or water is forced to yield some of its
elemental strength.
give back that strength.
turn the Light out, watch the stars get brighter. watch
the stars enter the house. or even enter the head. filling
it directly.
imagine that — filling the eye, the head, the body with raw stellar energy.
the Wednesday flight to Auckland looks in doubt as of today. volcano Cordon Caulle shot so much stuff up to extreme altitudes (over 15 km) and some of that got caught in the jet stream of the Roaring Forties weather pattern, and now, a week later it’s traveled around the globe and hit southern Australia, Tassie, and eNZed. crossing the Tasman Sea is best done by boat. sheesh. Darwin Station keeps an eye on it all locally for the VAAC.
already entering the drone zone of movement, though, regardless of what goes on with the ash cloud. though would not relish being a passive observer of an ash-compromised turbine engine. Air New Zealand hasn’t canceled any flights versus all the other carriers who have up to Quantas which has canceled all their flights to Tassie and eNZed. what to make of that? the NASA images are at least definitive, and surprisingly not referenced in Australian media anywhere.
500 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile flying
250 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile driving
These are very approximate/average numbers and are affected by the type of plane/vehicle and its relative efficiency.
We are changing the course of nature. Or, more precisely, without life on this planet, nature would be different. We are life in this place. Or we are life, as life is a perturbation of basal flows. An always-inchoate flow, but never completely still. This is all we are, a way for the cosmos to increase entropy, perhaps, as some believe, the best way for the cosmos to increase entropy, to wind down, into a cold and silent nothing.
But it’s all in the language, isn’t it? And even the language needs to get shucked, ripped from its stalk, tossed away to reveal and remind of the truth that the word is not the phenomena that it de-scribes …
Back to:
All Roads Lead To Rome.
as principle.
The questions are, What is Rome, and What is a Road?
et cetera
Nine km. in three days, not bad — it’s actually getting easy — I need to do more sprinting and drills, but just moving faster is best, feeling the greater resistance of the water and consequent speed. That and watching the sky and listening to the birds on the walk from my office to the pool. The sky was exceptionally dark and clear last night, it got down to maybe 40F, pretty cool. Totally dreaming about being in the bush, as they say here, in the back-country, the wilds, the wilderness. To watch the stars sink right to the black edge of the world. Squatting, eyes tearing in the chill condensate of mid-night. The Southern Cross is practically at Zenith now which seems strange, but at a similar latitude as in the north in winter, Polaris also reaches quite close to Zenith. Pity no chance of catching a good sky on this tour. Now too many folks to visit with before possible departure, too many things to do, including whether not to leave again.
Matter is not what it appears to be. Its most obvious property — variously called resistance to motion, inertia, or mass — can be understood more deeply in completely different terms. The mass of ordinary matter is the embodied energy of more basic building blocks, themselves lacking mass. Nor is space what it appears to be. What appears to our eyes as empty space is revealed to our minds as a complex medium full of spontaneous activity. — Frank Wilczek
Sometimes I get the feeling that I don’t recognize even my own life. Among the array of phenomena which present themselves for the sensual body-system every … second … recognition shouldn’t be necessary for any one of them, given that change is the governing principle, or so. All should be new every time, all the time(s), and thus recognizable whether or not there are any observable and (relatively) invariant* features. It could be that this lack of recognition is itself merely the reliance on external models or comprehensions of ‘what’s out there’ as opposed to a deeper reliance on what is experienced by the Self as being (relatively) invariant. more “matters”
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.
With the growth of industry comes the possibility of a predatory life; and if the groups of savages crowd one another in the struggle for subsistence, there is a provocation to hostilities, and a predatory habit of life ensues. There is a consequent growth of a predatory culture, which may for the present purpose be treated as the beginning of the barbarian culture. This predatory culture shows itself in a growth of suitable institutions. The group divides itself conventionally into a fighting and a peace-keeping class, with a corresponding division of labor. Fighting, together with other work that involves a serious element of exploit, becomes the employment of the able-bodied men; the uneventful everyday work of the group falls to the women and the infirm. — Thorstein Veblen
A man gets shot once in the face, and a second time to the head to ensure his demise. Other men are shot. A woman is shot. Why celebrate except in the instance of savagery, with an up-turned face, contorted with suppressed rage, making a vengeful grimace, and declaring the nation-state’s supremacy. An eye for an eye, the context lost on those who do not even know the content of the holy book coming from their own god. Instead, kill and be killed and kill and be killed. more “the predatory life/death: lex talionis”
Humana ante oculos foede cum vita iaceret in terris oppressa gravi sub religione […] primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra […] ergo vivida vis animi pervicit, et extra processit longe flammantia moenia mundi atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque, unde refert nobis victor quid possit oriri, […] quare religio pedibus subiecta vicissim obteritur, nos exaequat victoria caelo.
(When the life of man lay foul to see and grovelling upon the earth, crushed by the weight of superstition, […] ’twas a man of Greece who dared first to raise his mortal eyes to meet her, and first to stand forth to meet her […]. And so it was that the lively force of his mind won its way, and he passed beyond the fiery walls of the world, and in mind and spirit traversed the boundless whole; whence in victory he brings us tidings what can come to be and what cannot […]. And so superstition in revenge is cast beneath men’s feet and trampled, and victory raises us to heaven.) — Lucretius
Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know every object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of ‘Green’? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heat waves can that eye be? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the “beginning was the word.” — Stan Brakhage, “Metaphors on Vision”
tired of prickly, intimate and fleshy human relationships being flattened into ‘friend’-nodes, the erasure of myth by constant visibility and exhausting availability.
what kind of network society do i want to support? a closed compound of willingly data-mined crayons or an open net of chance and unpredictability? more…
I am of the same mind, and had decided a couple months ago to do the same — at the end of February. I have found it most instructive that since I put this status up:
Capped by the Goldman-Sacks pseudo-IPO for the wealthy, and in light of the massive data-harvesting of everything posted here, I am leaving FB as of 01 March 2011 — if you are interested in staying in touch, email me chazhop at gmail dot com with your contact info before that time…
I’ve gotten all of four five responses in the last month and only one at the suggested email address — of around 500 ‘friends.’ It appears that the concept of ‘friend’ in the FaceBook space is quite completely divergent from that of my own conception of friend-ship. There is a bloated vacuity in the expressed presence that the applied protocol of FB requires as a condition of participation. I hate to pop your bubble.
Again, back to voice. Given the process of coalescing and erosion. In order to bind the grains of disparate disciplines, different socio-cultural systems, and idiosyncratic paths, a voice which allows some transcendence of localized protocols of communication is necessary. That voice must needs to be poetic in a fundamental sense. It need not have a particular density or timbre, but it does need to be located somewhere within and without any and all those disciplinary spaces, pores.
Is a poetic voice immediate or is it cumulative? It is supposed that the smallest increment or grain of uttered language, the phoneme can hardly be a poetic vocalization. So, maybe language is generally cumulative, accretionary, in that geologic sense of layered erosional deposition, reification, burial, uplift, and consequent re-erosion. In this instance, it is then possible to find a shiny-smooth cobble of, say, cloudy quartz. Well-balanced, raising expectations of imminent knowledge of something when in the hand, pleasing to the eye. What are its origins since arising from the heart of stars: silicon, oxygen. At one point following the gravitational accretion of the planet, the silicon was oxidized by some environment rich in oxygen. Silicon dioxide. Under pressure, super-heated, igneous differentiation allowed masses of these molecules to collect and form crystalline agglomerations within a cooling batholith. Uplift and erosion brings that raw mass to the surface where it is shattered slowly, washed by waters, and dragged downwards by gravity. The cobble is smoothed with many others, and buried with all those, pressure cementing them all again into a single mass, a conglomerate. Another uplift and erosional cycle breaks the conglomerate cement and releases this smooth stone into a creek bed, into a river, where it is further polished. Holding it in the palm, what is its voice? What does it say? How does it speak to its temporary holder? What does it say other that the mute message of gravity to be let down, to be given back to the earth? If the holder knows, they might read signs in the surface, in the raw presence of the thing-ness of the cobble. The signs point to histories and pathways. The reader has to understand the basic elements of those signs in order to create their own understanding as to the origin of the object. But of its pure presence, nothing need be known, but only the immediate experience of the Self in juxtaposition with this thing. Naming all this is the root of language.
Plucked from the poetic talus, the transformed erosional product of language, the cobble might be heaved through the wall of the proverbial glass house of culture, period. Howl.
Upon the chaotic flux of waters, flying over the deep, tossed in all directions by erratic waves of fluid movement. No reason to expect anything other than transformative change when exposed to such flow:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
— Shakespeare, The Tempest
posted
place: KCL Campground, Carrizo Plains National Monument, California
The argument may be made that a fence, a window, an article of clothing, a wall are — one-and-the-same — deflectors of the extant natural flow of energies out there. They represent a set of energy deflectors imposed by humans on their environs.
The other issue, tied to this is the production of waste (unusable) heat energy which impinges on a locality after the use of high energy sources which are subsequently rendered into usable and unusable forms of energy with varying efficiency. The primary source of this unusable energy is in the actual production and maintenance of the energy deflector systems: making and installing a fence, fabricating a window (glass being an extremely energy-intensive manufacturing process), building a wall, a building, a dam. more “change”
posted
place: en route Livermore - Carrizo Plains, California
If you look for the truth outside yourself,
It gets farther and farther away.
Today walking alone, I meet it everywhere I step.
It is the same as me, yet I am not it.
Only if you understand it in this way
Will you merge with the way things are.
— Tung-Shan
Loss, and the new. Preparing for the forward-fall to engage the conditions that hydrocarbon burning precipitates: back on the road, hydrocarbon flaring, with a slow drive down to Carizzo Plains via the “Petroleum Highway.” Along which are the still-operational fields of California’s early oil boom. Drive by the Kettleman Dome area, a structure that I examined as my first exploration review at Unocal back in 1982. I had to gather all alternative methods data, produce some maps and structural interpretations, and an exploration strategy that correlated seismic and well-log data sets.
Tracking the San Andreas Fault. The knife-through-birthday-cake-icing scar that runs from the here to the there of California. Rupture zone riding. Making images and writing. The usual. Or the unusual. Beginning or Ending.
This after the Solstice lunar eclipse last deep night which hung in a cleared sky slowly transforming eye-socket receivers into Light-cups, catching a burnt sienna flux from every sun-rise-and-set on the limb of the planet, at the moment. Very fine. And gone for this life’s time. On Earth as it is in Heaven.
On this movement, at this time, cars fill Interstate-5 everywhere, all the time. The pavement is uneven and shattered in some places from the heaviness of the truck traffic as well as the bankrupt state of the state of the Union. wads of toilet paper fill the grass at the scenic overlook like albino poppies. Later, I leave the interstate for less travelled roads, much less travelled, I see very few cars at all. But then there are oil pumps and pipes.
Qi follows the will. (The will is a pathway imposed by Life on the ‘free’ movement of Qi energies.) If the heart is centered and in balance, the eye is clear.
If the heart is misplaced, distortion of everything seen and sensed occurs.
cross my heart and hope to die. opening the heart. set someone’s heart to rest. heartless. cold hands warm heart. near someone’s heart. broken hearts. cry your heart out. heart-broken. he’s got a big heart. to one’s heart’s content. a man after my own heart. have one’s heart in the right place. absence makes the heart grow fonder. affair of the heart. heart and soul. bleeding heart liberal. after your own heart. be still my beating heart. by heart. beating heart. change of heart. steal someone’s heart. a man after my own heart. have one’s heart in one’s mouth. open your heart.
absence makes the heart grow fonder. take heart. after my own heart. at heart. break her heart. by heart. change of heart. cold hands, warm heart. cross my heart. cry her heart out. cut to the heart of the matter. do his heart good. eat your heart out. find it in their heart. from the bottom of my heart. get to the heart of. gave me heart failure. half a heart. harden mine heart. have a heart. have no heart for. heavy heart. in her heart of hearts. lose heart. lost her heart to. near to my heart. not have the heart to. poured out his heart. set her heart on. sick at heart. steal someone’s heart. steel my heart against. take heart. take to heart. to her heart’s content. warm heart. warm the cockles of his heart. wearing his heart on his sleeve. with all her heart. young at heart. with half a heart.
Originally all sounds were originals. They occurred at one time and in one place only. Sounds were then indissolubly tied to the mechanisms which produced them. The human voice traveled only as far as one could shout. …
We have split the sound from the maker of the sound. Sounds have been torn from their natural sockets and given an amplified and independent existence. Vocal sound, for instance, is no longer tied to a hole in the head but is free to issue from anywhere in the landscape. In the same instant it may issue from millions of holes in millions of public and private places around the world.
Schafer, R. Murray. (2006). The Music of the Environment in “Audio Culture.” New York: Continuum International Publishers.
This Julian Treasure talk is a very short (seven minute) but provocative dance around some issues of sound and hearing (and listening).
By substituting the concept ‘energy’ for ‘sound’ the issue expands and finds some wider principles. Action, activity, creative and destructive both, releases energy. Many times this energy is in the form of sound. Techno-social systems generate massive amounts of waste energy in this form of sonic vibrations. Living organisms tend not to generate waste sounds as any wasted energy possibly compromises the life-form (life being a negentropic energy-optimizing process). On an evolutionary scale, waste energy (in the form of adaptive experimentation by the life-form) is incrementally minimal when considered in juxtaposition to the total energy expenditure of the life-form itself. However, en masse life clearly plays a role in accelerating the production of entropy of the Terran system when considered in comparison to a planetary system without life.
Humans, in their superficially intelligent pursuit of technological solutions, especially in the recent era, have created the means to generate tremendous amounts of waste energy. While engineering is about solving problems in the most efficient manner possible, the vast majority of devices created are clearly inefficient. This is especially apparent when the entire process necessary to bring a device to a completed configuration is considered, ensemble — that is, the extraction of earth materials, transport, processing, and manufacturing.
Whenever one has a technological process, it is likely that at one or more points in the process, sonic waste energy is being spewed out into the surroundings. This plethora of waste energy impinges on the body system with (un)certain results. (Remember the experiments of playing heavy metal or classical music at plants? It’s easier to understand the effects when you consider the energy content of the two different sonic manifestations.) In a typical urban environment, a tremendous amounts of (sonic) waste energy is, literally, reverberating everywhere. Any flux of (waste) energy will change that which it encounters. It will change the energy state of everything along its pathway to eventual almost-dissolution in the un-stellar void.
Using your ears to guide you, find a place where you can comfortably be for an hour. If eyes desire — sight falling between night sky stars tracing on the retina — could carry the ears to a same-such place, life would have different potential.
There is missing, in the long paragraphs of text that has characterized this work, this labor, there is missing any tacit explication of Self. That dimension of be-ing is always held behind various structures and impediments, calcifications and reifications. Without any potential for at least mirroring that which is out there, separated from the wet eye and dry skin, reflected constituents of anything true.
So, false or antithetical meanings constantly overtake the possibility of saying (something) profound(ly) that “I am.” Instead there is duplicitous blather. Not that this is rooted in anything internal, actually not at all. The internal as a direct expression of conscious and unconscious presence is always authentic. It is only when that internal state collides with the social, even in the mental articulations of language, where pre-tension arises.
What life can compare with this? –
Sitting alone quietly by the window,
I observe the leaves fall,
the flowers bloom as the seasons come and go.
Do you understand, or not?
— Seccho
a gap opens in the flow of being. stopping all progress. no forward momentum. inertia scrapes the pavement. heels dragging, eyes on the ground, not the horizon nor the stars.
I hear myself say “shit,” with a drawn out groan when waking up in the morning. Rebirth? Or merely recognizing that the night visions were not reaches into some omnipotent primal mind, but were instead merely what I saw yesterday, under the sun, with their false meaning correlated into the banality of teeth-grinding dreams.
The north-shore-bound train rattles across that one bad joint on the Harbor Bridge outside the window, dung-da-dung-dung-da-dung-dung-da-dung-dung-da-dung. Four cars, eight sets of wheels: a single axle, three doubles, and a single.
[After watching her long eyelashes, seated as she is, side-wise to me, profiled at the front of the bus, I cannot that night close my eyes and see her…]
Why does the potential in life seem to drain ever more quickly here, and there. After an mid-afternoon pause, outside to record sounds. Because other progresses are not made when confronted by the screen. Therefore. Capitulation of any weak progression of thought, it comes to nowhere.
Thinking instead, flat, two dimensional, of the solitary and gape-mouthed death, settling that night into the room of living.
And in the evening, making for bed early with a tinge of migraine, I say, “my third eye has closed.” And seek another sleep in tangled comfort.
Some people walk with both eyes focused on their goal: the highest mountain peak in the range, the fifty-mile marker, the finish line. They stay motivated by anticipating the end of the journey. Since I tend to be easily distracted, I travel somewhat differently — one step at a time, with many pauses in between. Occasionally the pauses become full stops that can last anywhere from two minutes to ten hours. More often they’re less definite. … Trapped by our concepts and languages and the utter predictability of our five senses, we often forget to wonder what we’re missing as we hurry along toward goals we may not even have chosen. I became a tracker by default, not design, when my tendency to be distracted by life’s smallest signs grew into an unrelenting passion to trace those obscure, often puzzling patterns somewhere, anywhere — to their source or end or simply to some midpoint in between. But when I began tracking lost people, what had begun as an eccentric habit — following footsteps on the ground — quickly matured into an avocation. … I now commonly walk toward a single goal: to meet the person at the other end of the tracks. — Hannah Nyala (from Point Last Seen).
ed: This short note is the epilogue for the Migrating:Art:Academies: book. Because of the heavy-duty editorial tasks, I otherwise didn’t have time to write something more comprehensive on the ideas surrounding movement and learning, maybe next time!
We suspect that even though travel in the modern world seems to have been taken over by the Commodity — even though the networks of convivial reciprocity seem to have vanished from the map — even though tourism seems to have triumphed — even so — we continue to suspect that other pathways still persist, other tracks, unofficial, not noted on the map, perhaps even secret pathways still linked to the possibility of an economy of the Gift, smugglers’ routes for free spirits, known only to the geomantic guerrillas of the art of travel. — Hakim Bey, Overcoming Tourism
This volume Migrating:Art:Academies: represents yet another step on the (linguistic) migration from nation to nation, academy to academy, culture to culture, friend to friend, order to order, life through life. As with the first volume, Migrating Realities, any impossible contortions of English are this editor’s responsibility, and given the time constraints for this latest MigAA tome, there are sure to be some short-comings. But then, of all the movements within the social, language migrates the most of all. It is never static. Nor should it be, especially as it accompanies the learning process — a process which is essentially about encountering and naming that which is not (yet) known. more “The End of the Road and The Onset of Dreaming”
It’s a good example of the affect of mediation on socially-generated practices of any sort [this came into mind when I saw a poster advertising a IEEE conference here in Sydney. The posted contained all the recognized and standardized functions of conferences anywhere on any subject. The cocktail evening cruises on the ________ (fill in the blank) river/harbor/lake. The hospitality suites in the _________ (fill in the blank) hotel. The keynotes by famous personages. The plenaries, the break-outs, the posters, workshops, and seminars. yadda, yadda. Don’t people get tired of this endless repetition of heavily coded social protocols?]
The following was downloaded from the UM (University of Minnesota) original Gopher online text retrieval system sometime in the winter of 1991-92. I think it’s the first document (extant) that I downloaded via that new networked document system — the direct precursor of the WWW. Coming around in a very long, very wide circle, from the roots of the digital coming-to-being in the last millennium, breathe deeply:
An Outward Bound group rafts in, and are lectured to in the Trex seating arranged for “camp fire talks” here in the campground. I find it really bizarre, when there a thousand ‘natural’ places to sit for a dialogue, they make a bee-line to the plastic composite seats. I guess they got lectured on the tamarisk mitigation work around Echo Park, I didn’t ask, as I was too busy prepping for the day. They later went into the woods between the campground and the river and were doing something. Wonder if they saw the carnage I wrought on the tamarisk behind site #7! more “Trail Draw and Upper Pool Creek Canyon”
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, in the rain, but gradually it tapers off, though still 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 surely end up in a ditch somewhere. more “Sand Canyon transect”
posted
place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado
Start to try making time-lapse sequences from the immediate surroundings. Lousy and/or old equipment, a quasi-functioning power system, and the results show it. Add a portable generator, a better tripod, longer cabling, a 3-CCD camera with chip memory (ah to be free of tape!), and a laptop with a battery that lasts longer than the start-up sequence. I’m ready to cash in some of my retirement piddle to cover it. Maybe $10K I could get away with all of it, including a decent audio recorder? That, along with a better 4WD truck and I’d be part of the pseudo-elite for once. hah. So, anyway, now, marooned in Echo Park by the intense weather, (I was warned, fair enough, but I told the ranger that I wasn’t planning to come out until Friday next at least, anyway, so things should dry up by then, and that I had enough supplies for at least two weeks if not more). Stormy already today, late morning, humidity pulled the clouds up, and while attempting some decent time-lapses, it gets worse. What else is new? Maybe I end up sitting in the car just writing. There are rain filaments across to the north.
Cutting tamarisk growth behind camping site (#7) to feed the fire. Keeps mind busy, with flinging sharp blade biting into hard wood. No help around in case of an accident. This sharpens the wits. more “end of the road”
posted
place: Mitten Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado
Two days here in Echo Park already. Three nights, one night alone, Friday and Saturday there were a couple of people in, then tonight, Sunday, no one around at all. A bit creepy, especially with the mountain lion kill I just discovered over in the middle of the walk-in camping site. Saw that on the way back from Mitten Park this afternoon. Been thinking of the cougars the whole time I’ve been here. Seeing evidences of kills scattered widely across the entire space. Wondering what the total range is for a single cat? I just don’t want to meet one. Having fantasy imaginations, and on the way back from Mitten Park had composed an Ode to the Puma, not able to memorize it sufficiently to record it, but recite it loudly on the way back.
The trail is choked with small purple flowers where it starts from Echo Park. Then there are the vague petroglyphs, then one set of rafters float by, small against Steamboat Rock. Looking at things great and small, it’s all relative to the eye, and the unfolding context.
Eight years ago, I leave a stone from Iceland in a cavity of the standing carcass of a burned piñon, the stone is now gone. Where?
posted
place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado
Have an incredibly erotic dream with Jennifer D., back from the Culture Capitals 2000 project in Prague. Will have to email her. Otherwise watery squint-eyed perusal of the rotating stellar field in ma’ face.
This morning, a raptor circles a hundred meters away with its mate hidden in the trees along Pool Creek, making a creeeewing sound. It’s the same noise it made when I wandered over to the creek earlier in the morning. All the birds are noisy—it makes a multi-dimensional flow which lies on the ear with pleasing insistence. No need to move the head, as the sources are in motion and occasionally in sight. more “arrival and meditation”
Apocalyptic. Huge wind storm, driving wind upwards from the playa to the black clouds collected over the ranges. Wind. Then, much later in the evening, the air becomes heavy on the lungs, and a fine powdered dust hangs in the more still air, like a fog, but dust, powdered mountains, air-borne terrain. It is dark, lightning and thunder shuffles in the background, unseen, muffled behind the curtain of dislocated earth hanging in the air. Eyes sting, nose waters, pressure heavy on the lungs, body recalls the Great Sydney Dust Storm of ’09, sleep is disturbed so the reading of Augustus continues, more on that later.
Many other events and actions go un-commented-upon, so far. And there are more sounds to upload, along with numerous time-lapse sequences. These seem most apropos to the time here. Watching the weather — back to the “window weather’ concept.
Heading out on a three-month road-trip. Tailwind across the reservation at least part of the time. Embarkation for slickrock and slot canyons, salt pans, playa, and rotated fault-blocks. Heavy tailwind expected, along with winter weather for the rest of the week across the entire west. Hope to appear, unscathed, at the other end in Wendover.
The road fills the head with eye-blink disorientation. Transient fragments of thoughts thrum along in no particular order, no rhythm, as unconnected as any sequence of fated events: reflecting fated events in minds-eyes. Too much seen outside the window, beyond the amorphous silica barrier. And too much not sensible because of that attenuated presence versus the full immersion. (Virtual) movement. Looking for roadside memorials this time. Something to lock the thoughts into the reality of mortal coils. Find a few. Stopping for them is always a bit tricky, especially with a 65- or 75-mph speed limit. I drive a bit slow with this old vehicle of mine, and slower still so that once I spy a cross of some sort, I can safely stop on the shoulder. To die on the same stretch of road somehow would not be auspicious; under the wide silent sky and red cliffs, stars, with the smell of spring sage in the air. Wind passing through shredded plastic bags caught on the barbed-wire fence. Someone told me those bags are called witches panties. A small golden bell tinkles vacantly, tied to a wreath of plastic flowers shivering in the wind.
What is the difference between that containable in the reduced tracing of recorded, reproduced, recreated image or sound and that which resists the reductive process with an impassive tenacity, no, a merely passive and eternal persistence. The difference lies in what the observer brings to the reductive process and what the hearer, viewer brings when consuming the reduced trace. It has little if anything to the originary energy of the thing, das Ding, das Ganze, itself. The emanations affect the reduction, there is a direct correlation, but in the technique, the process of reduction is deeply tied to the techno-social. No way to decouple that. (Or is there?)
All the way from telling stories to making movies to painting canvases to building houses.
What is the advantage of shunting the energy of a situation through more and more of the techno-social domain? Or does it matter at all? Compare (telling) stories in person about an experience (sono-linguistic reductions) with posting digital photographs online (visible radiation reductions). In principle a reduction is a reduction is a reduction. And when compared the the situated phenomena itself, any and all reductions are not the thing itself.
The dam at Lake Powell, as with the Hoover, a high-security zone, protected by hired guns. No bags allowed in the visitors center. Celebrations of all that the techno-social can bring to the merely social, along with a big-screen overview of the lake at 59-percent-capacity with a fat white bathtub ring contrasting the red rock cliffs. German tourists debate the advantages of the Best Western versus the Quality Inn motels.
CLUI residency looms within a completely different tectonic regime. Travel to that point will traverse no zenith, instead will follow flat-lying salt-pans after The Canyon and other intense impingements on the eyeballs. While the volcano simmers on Fimmvörthuháls, Ice Land.
“When stars form, they form from the collapse of a cloud of gas and dust. And in the process of the gas and dust falling in, it doesn’t fall directly in—it sort of spirals in slowly,” Fazio says.
He adds understanding a star’s formation may someday help astronomers understand the formation of our galaxy. “How did we get here, and where are we going? That’s what we are trying to understand.”
Seems to be a basic couple of questions. Both which eliminate religion from view when religion posits irrefutable answers to both, without exception. And which suggests the social role of science (what else is there?) approaching the same role as religion. The feigned disentangled observer in science is immersed in such wide pursuit while playing with little bits of material: traces of answer to those questions. Or merely caught in the race that dominates this time—that between religion and science. One proceeding from apparent Truth, the other converging on it.
What is certain is that even a skill as abstract as literacy has an unexpectedly strong physical aspect. In the history of humanity, our attention has shifted from the horizon to the length of our own arms: the printed page or the electronic monitor, or at the farthest the television screen. (p. 237)
Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity, Tenner, E., Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003
This shifting of attention has deeply affected the eyes, with a documented rise in myopia in more literate societies. Nothing like a myopic population: with the simultaneous illusion of tele-vision being foisted on bodies everywhere!
Edward Tenner, in Our Own Devices examines a number of basic technologies and their affect on embodied cultural/social participation. Think athletic shoes, chairs, eyeglasses, typewriters/keyboards, baby nursing bottles, flip-flops, and helmets. Where did they come from, why did they develop, and ultimately, what is their affect on users.
There are so many examples of this, one need only select any particular technology and begin to meditate on its source, its uses and (mis)applications: the affects on human presence gradually become apparent. The deeper the meditation on these, and the wider the field of affect is likely to surface. Tenner’s detailed histories become a bit tedious if the reader’s curiosity wears away, as the tone of the writing doesn’t change throughout, but it is in the examination of the details that connections can be made and eventually some basic principles emerge. Tenner himself is a bit glib about the meaning of the deduced affectations, and remains neutral with a slightly optimistic outlook.
In the case of computer keyboards, though, for example, he does not go beyond the direct dialectic between inventor, device, and user. Doing this, he neglects the affectations that arise not from direct usage of a device, but the indirect affects which are present as the widest context in which the device arises in a complex techno-social system. Clearly, this is not his goal, rather it appears to be more of an entertaining and surficial cabinet-of-curiosity stroll through the obscure history of everyday objects. In my opinion he misses a potent opportunity to carry through to the deeper relations between technology, technique, fundamental social relation, and embodied be-ing.
The condition of virtuality arises when humans create a situation which attenuates the flows that are impinging on their sensual and embodied presence. When technology is defined as a way to alter the paths of energy flow: virtuality is a subset condition of the altered flows such that the flows that are obviously (or not!) entering the body system are attenuated. The obvious (materialist!) subset of the widest set is that grouping which attenuates the classical sensory-input spectra. These may be ‘scientifically’ framed based on typical wave-based mechanical and electro-magnetic physics: the EM frequency band of visible Light, the pressure-induced electricity of touch, and so on. In a holistic approach to presence, the affectations of flow are continuous, complete, and substantive.
Alluding to yet a further subset is the use of glass as a specific form of energized matter which is placed between the eye and the ‘world out there.’ This is a fundamental form of virtuality, where silicon dioxide is introduced as an attenuating filter of flows between embodied presence and the cosmos. (this is a short intro to a longer text on the history of glass that’s cooking on the back burner.)
If one constructs a tool, what is one doing, and why is one doing it? How will one do it?
How to control of flows around oneself? And what does this control mean? Where does the desire to control arise from? Is it simply about evolutionary (survival/procreative) pressures? Is there anything about control that is altruistic (or simply outside of the broadly evolutionary imperative)?
The divide between life-forms that make tools and ones that don’t is fundamental, but it may be ignored when regarding the smooth continuum framing life as a system(?) that alters the flows of energy around it generally to its advantage (or to its need to continue — life is about life needing to continue life). The divide then appears to arise only when one considers how (from a mechanistic p.o.v.) that control is exerted.
This divide seems especially arbitrary when the body itself may be seen as a tool. The mechanical relations between bone structures, for example, or the magnifying ability of the lens in the eye. And, extending the definition of tool beyond the purely mechanical to, say, chemical, the body is a clearly a refinery in the exact same sense as a petroleum refinery. It conducts a wide-ranging set of thermodynamically driven reactions to access and distribute concentrated energy sources that it has introduced to its system. While there is a material dividing plane, the skin, which historically looms largely absolute in determining many classifications of relation and order, that plane may also be seen as arbitrary. The surface tissues — including the entire gut and lungs — are highly permeable surfaces which are constantly interchanging matter and energy with the environment they are in. In an optimal sense, at a particular time, this interchange process does not degrade the general order of the biotic system, but it does precipitate localized and systemic change. Also to be considered are the millions of microscopic organisms which synergize with the larger human body system — without which that system would likely not survive.
Are there, then, distinctions to be made based on body-as-tool and the ‘external’ tool that the body/mind system synthesizes? Or are these distinctions merely artifacts of the entire mechanistic p.o.v.?
It would seem so. If one considers, again, the relations within the body between , say, limb or organ, where a part may be seen as having a particular function which benefits or affects another part. A particular part has a function (as any tool also has) which aids in the performance of the body-system and interacts with other specific mechanisms in the body. In a living body-system these inter-relations are both necessary and sufficient if one includes the those moving between the body and the external. The body is seen as an indivisible whole, but without the constant interactions with the external environment, it would, for practical purposes, dis-integrate immediately.
The point of this short meditation is to emphasize the process which a tool, by definition, precipitates. That process is the fundamental alteration of the energy flows to which the tool is applied. This process unites the purpose of both internal and external systems for energy flow change which may be seen as a tool. The body is a technology as much as anything external to it which causes an alteration of extant energy flows. (Uff, this suggests that life itself be defined as a technology as it always alters the flows around it — we are life, we alter the flows around us, we are a technology.)
The division between tool-makers and those organisms which do not make tools may then be seen as a somewhat arbitrary one. Both organisms are needful of altering the surrounding flows to survive, they actualize that need via evolved mechanisms as they relate with those particular flows. The ultimate point for both internal and external tool use is the optimized continuance of life.
Morning, mourning notes on encounter, in no particular order.
It is on a pathway, the pathway, in the mode of movement, in the shifting of unknown situations, where encounter occurs. These encounters are traced with the full presence of the body and all aspects where they occur.
There is the general rule on a hiking trail, uphill gets right-of-way: those struggling and straining to make it to the top of whatever heights that you’ve just been on should be given precedence. It’s always a question, though, what the precise character of the encounter will be. Whether you have seen (or heard) the approach of an Other, through dense forest, or whether you round a turn to be confronted by a gaggle of silent walkers. Encounter is a culturally specific regime overlying that of the embodied, the animal. On trails in the West the density of hikers is generally low, except in National Parks which can see crowds as dense any on Fifth Avenue in New York City at lunch-time. This is one criteria on which to judge a trail — not merely the views afforded, but the number of people encountered. Escaping from human presence is as prominent a thought as what other ‘natural’ phenomena might be encountered. more “movement and encounter”
The road novel: a tracing of the displacement of the embodies Self across the Greater (or Lesser) Unknown. The road journal. The road. What is it about the road. It’s not merely a metaphoric interpretation of life, it is life. blah-blah-blah.
(in clipped phraseology)
Writing the fluid movement, writing to map encounter, it’s a hopeless task except as is comes closer and closer to the asymptotic point of writing-while-be-ing. It’s not a wall to break through, it is a separate reality. Talk about parallel universes! Writing and be-ing. Writing-in-be-ing.
Writing is the pen/cursor traveling across the page/screen. A locked dialectic of eye-to-2D-surface. Smoldering neuronal fire slogging between.
Writing what is(was) is always the case.
Back to the idea of the performative expression. That of telling the stories from the road. I did this in an annotated form in the performance at the Ultimate Akademie in Köln, Al Hansen’s old haunt. But how to do that in a way that is meaning-full in the context of this thesis project?
Obviously, there are many domains where verbal language is not useful or sufficient for description, and the many alternate systems used by humans, like mathematics, music, chemical symbolisms, graphics, maps, etc., show that this has been addressed since a long time. But some aspects are not covered yet. The main missing factor is dynamics. All notation systems are static and don’t cover the essentially dynamic character of life. This is a possible problem for a civilization that commits by far the largest part of its cultural memory to a system of static representations. In many non-western cultures, there is (or was) a strong tradition of non-verbal, dynamic cultural transmissions and it needs to be noticed that western civilizations have lost “the science of ritual” to a large extent (Staal 1982). There is the large field of cultural movement patterns that are not amenable in principle to static representations, since movement, when frozen in a static form, simply vanishes. Dynamis is incontrovertible with Stasis. This essential lack of all the static CMM that are so widespread in western civilizations alerts us to the possibility that perhaps there may be some very essential factor that civilizations are losing when they commit the bulk of their cultural transmission to written, static representations. — Andreas Goppold, Criticism and defects of writing and language
The road-as-pathway is a channel for the flow of energy. It is defined by socially-constructed standards and protocols: a web of socially-applied energies follow the limitations and directedness of those protocols. Roads are a human construct in response to the existence of natural blockages that divert from desired trajectories, that expend communal life-energies and threaten the control of energy resources.
The road is perhaps a synthesized mirror for the human-navigable river, that directed natural space of flow, or the ocean which is the cumulative and spatial confluence-of-all-rivers.
Practically all natural landscapes have some form of blockage as to cause a deviation to even slow and deliberate human passage. So, when there is a lack of free and easy passage, first a foot-path evolves, or is established through troddden effort. This is a trajectory for the body, with the foot leading. Seeking a pathway on foot requires vigilance and concentrated attention in many environments, though this condition is necessarily eliminated from daily life in the developed world — almost completely through the efforts to flatten, level, grade, and pave large swaths of the Terran surface. more “A start to meditations on The Road”
The following quick essay was for the last and final edition of the annual netarts awards from the Machida Museum in Tokyo:
Grand Prize for this year, the online platform VisitorsStudio, is not a complete newcomer to the netart scene — it’s been running as a live visual-sonic collaboratory for a few years now. As a playground, it offers many degrees of freedom within what appears at first to be a very restrictive environment. But, isn’t it true that all play-places have limits? Your mother would never let you go off just anywhere and play. Your mother would certainly approve of VisitorsStudio. The limits of VisitorsStudio lie primarily in the intriguing area of file sizes (more on that shortly). The interface is intuitive and straight forward, and does not entail a steep learning curve: anyone can create mesmerizing works in no time.
The most obvious elements in digital ‘mash-up’ play are the text, the image (still and moving), and the sound. Participants in VisitorsStudio may gather these elements themselves and using a rich set of live controls make compelling live mixes. There is an existing database of files to work with, or, you can prepare your own media library to upload and play with. This is where each sound, image, or video file is limited to a 200kb maximum size — you will be surprised at what can be done — the result is absolute proof that great things come in small packages.
VisitorsStudio is available for special performances and makes an ideal platform for educators in all settings who wish to stimulate imaginations with real interactive digital art — it’s not simulated and it’s not eye-candy. As a collaborative tool, it does not aggressively take the foreground in the process, but rather works as a solid and supportive background element for seamless play.
Of course, the best way to enjoy a jam session is with a heavy-duty sound system and a 72-inch plasma screen or a video projector. You will be the resident visual-sonic artist. But intimate small-screen solo play is also very satisfying. The best feature is the possibility for live remote partners and audience. Invite your friends half-way around the world to join you in a jam session!
Technically, VisitorsStudio needs only an internet connection and a browser running the latest version of the Flash plugin. And, hey, if we ask, maybe they will port a Wii controller to VisitorsStudio! Wouldn’t that be fun? Let’s play!
One of the Honorable Mentions for the 2009 netart award is SiTO’s gridcosm project which, if there ever was a primordial interactive play-place online, this is it. Gridcosm was initiated by Ed Stasny way back in 1997 as an outgrowth of SiTO’s live online image mash-up collaborations. That’s in the Precambrian era of internet time! It even has its own Wikipedia entry! But gridcosm clearly tapped into something fundamental — with a fresh and accessible interface design; a solid back-end code; and exuding a rare social sensibility of precisely what it means to collaborate online — there are hundreds of contributors. A dozen years later, the collaborative space is continuously full with a vibrant and evolving palette of personalities and plenty evidence of creative juice spilling out onto the screen. The acronym SiTO originally came from OTIS (Operational Term is Stimulate) which was the motto of the nascent online collective collaboratory back in 1994 or so. So, kudos to gridcosm for sheer staying power and what looks to be a lively future. How many layers does an artwork need to have for it to be classified as cosmologically significant? Visit gridcosm and discover the answer to this profound question! It’s an open project for anyone to jump into — as are all the SiTO collaborative projects — so, check it out!
I was telling someone the other day that I am a good participant. I know how to jump into a situation and contribute in a way that is sensitive to the ambient flows that are happening at the same time as clearly manifesting a unique set of contributing flows. Perhaps a bit too conservative in respecting the paths of those ambient flows, but it’s probably better to be slightly more conservative than liberal. Uhh, such loaded terms. Useless words after they are so distorted by socio-politics of certain cultural configurations. Although it is ironic to note that here in Australia their political meaning is in (antipodal) opposition. Which simply emphasizes the idiocy of politics (as Peter Tosh observed once: Politics, “poli” means people, “ticks” are parasites, politics, parasites on the people). Words, language, always tends to go through this reification process. Followed by a morphing process when the reified language becomes overwhelmed when attempting to explicate new situations or when circumscribing known situations with a different point-of-view. The reified structures will be bolstered and protected until usage simply makes them redundant. more “on participation, part one”
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
exploring modalities of communication. of connection, of be-ing. Kittler shows up on the radar immediately (hmmm, recalling that extremely uncomfortable evening with him in that bar in Linz before the Intertwinedness happening. he needed the table to circulate around him. and it did because of the language (protocol) gap. I was not fluent in German enough to access the discussion that inevitably circulated, hovered, around him. strange situation. instead I talked with his assistant (and translator whose name I have now forgotten), a young American who came to worship Kittler in Berlin for a time. I left early as I had to catch a train to Copenhagen early the next morning.)
how to bind energy in to the text [as the particular creative output]. to be released in TIME. to the proper receiver.
that from an earlier travelogue entry. it clearly has been on mind for a long time. actually the transition from print-making to performance/happening was a mapping of that need. finding that the silver print was just too rigid a platform when compared to presence. although the print is, as with anything, in retrospect, a resonance of presence and be-ing as is any trace left in the wake of life. more “to be mindful of modalities”
not far as-the-raven-flies from the Baldwin cabin, over Ohio pass and to the east, here on the west side of the West Elk Wilderness. mild mountains. none within eye-shot breaking 12,000 feet. sedimentary, punctured by laccoliths, overlain by thick deposits of welded tuff, ash, and other volcanic ejecta, andesites, unstable, friable: the West Elk Breccia, 34 million years old.
and in the interests of not moving too far and getting as high as locally possible, Moseley Ridge, made up of those breccias, looks do-able, sort of. at least the view east from the top should be decent — the back of the Maroon Bells. bush-whacking. the first obstacle is an aspen grove with more downed timber than standing. the only progress possible is by balancing on the downed logs and moving along those. off the logs, it’s impossible. steep, turns out the whole western slope is slumping with fissures and extremely steep inclines. it is a real bush-whack. two hours of slow movement through the vegetation only to end up on talus that looked a whole lot smoother from the valley floor. very unstable. each step, leaping from rock to rock, never knowing which one might start to roll down the steep incline. the incline gradually steepens towards the base of the final (unattainable spires). giving up 100 meters from the saddle when rain starts making the rocks slick. low risk threshold. slow and wet retreat.
head down to Denver to meet Jim and Dona for a trip to DAM. I also called Dave to come by as he’s a former employee of the museum where he worked as an installation manager. the art forms a backdrop for stories, reflections, and dialogue. after lunch we head over to the MCA for a walk-thru. I’d never been there and it turns out to be quite a nice space — the rooftop bar and garden has a nice vibe to it. then back to the house to check out some of Jim’s recent Director-based media installation projects. and more…
Trade ye no mere moneyed art — James Johnson
then on to an IMax theater to meet Sally and Montse for the new Star Trek movie which was not very good. ‘nuf said. busy day. sonic documentation to come some future day as with many more past days. never the time to do the processing of files. accumulating faster than processing, a common problem for an archivist. what about being more exclusive? to choke the acquisitions process down to a manageable level. or more aggressively carving out processing time each day? that would come at the expense of sleep, methinks.
