field work
documentation
[ED: Documentation, yes. That’s all I do with the photography, all I ever did. Documenting immediate life scrolling by. And let that accumulate into a modest mass of imagery. Extracted from the mass, they appear fragmentary, and not so replete with ‘meaning.’ Here’s a handful from a warm 1988 summer’s end.]
Upon my re-patriation after three months in Iceland, Germany, Italy, France, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, following is a sample of what happened hanging with Willy & Andy in Hoboken:
Phill Niblock 1933 – 2024
Sorry for this text, it’s garbled, but I can’t make it less so in the moment. Check out some of the links below for more considered words and documentation of Phill’s presence and creative expressions. I’m dismayed at the number of obits that are appearing here … sheesh …
The other day I was reviewing older sound recordings on the website, one of which is a remix of sounds recorded at one of Phill Niblock’s annual Solstice events at his and Katherine’s loft in New York. Back in 2007 I was in the NYC area and was able to make it to one of these legendary happenings. A number of ShareNY friends had reminded me of them, and my modus operandi generally is when in town, check stuff out. And if Phill Niblock is doing something, well, there’s no excuse!
So, it was sad to hear of Phill’s passing. The hundreds, thousands of performances that he made, participated in, or facilitated for other artists—most often within the aegis of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation over the years—had a profound impact on all who experienced them. The annual Winter Solstice events at their loft were especially intense both in the immersive visual-sonic sense, but also in the powerful element of basic human encounter: always a slew of interesting folks attending!
As is noted in other obits, being and doing were things that Phill did with a profuse and personable energy. I was lucky to cross paths repeatedly with he and Katherine on their numerous transAtlantic forays and in NYC related to some ShareNY events.
Phill’s experimental visual and sonic work implemented a solid-and-shimmering tableau of full-on psychic immersion in live performance. The Solstice happening was merely one of the hundreds that Niblock brought into this universe from another, parallel universe, where time, sound, and Light have both more subtle and more tangible presence and energy.
An openness for exploring the profundity of the temporal was something that Bruce Elder and Stan Brakhage exposed me to back in the 80s, so Phill’s monumental 16mm opus, The Movement Of People Working, was immediately, electrically, attractive. It forms a compelling exploration of what human presence and be-ing actually is, not merely how it manifests: this element of lived immediacy imprints itself, over time on the receiver. And, combined with the sonic expressions forms a holistic, immersive experience. (Morton Feldman‘s influence.) Transcendent!
We shared the idea of duration in performance work: perhaps related to our separate instances of experiencing the work of Feldman. Phill often bringing duration to a beautiful extreme that inevitably sparked internal change within the witness/participant (there is no audience in this regard, there is only the Void!).
Condolences dear Katherine, and for our shared loss.
Visit Phill’s website for a deeper plunge. This obit by Lawrence English is especially illuminating. And the NYT obit gives a wide view on Phill’s life.
Further insight into the Solstice Events with some documentation at Roulette; along with a 12-hour video.
Minna Tarkka 1960 – 2023
Saddened to receive news from Andrew that friend, colleague, artist, researcher, producer, and facilitator Minna Tarkka had passed, far too young, on 27 August after a very brief illness.
I arrived in Helsinki, Finland, gritty-eyed, after an early morning flight from Reykjavík, in late August, 1994, on the first of many visits, sojourns, gigs, workshops, and residencies. After dropping my luggage at my friend Visa’s print-making studio on Jääkärinkatu, I made my way to Arabianranta and the University of Art and Design Helsinki (Taideteollinen korkeakoulu, or TAIK, now the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture), located then in the old Arabia porcelain factory on Hämeentie. I was in Helsinki for the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) and, later, for an international performance event (Fax You) at the Akademie Bookstore on Helsinki’s Night of the Arts with the Finnish artist, Visa Norros and others. ISEA was being hosted that year by the Media Lab at TAIK and directed by Minna Tarkka, a person who did things, who showed up, and who inspired others to show up and do things.
I first met Minna later that morning at the TAIK Arabianranta building on the 3rd Floor at the Media Lab—actually we collided in the hallway—auspicious and a bit embarrassing! She was dashing from Point A to Point B as Director during the very hectic symposium registration. After both of us proffered sheepish apologies and introduced ourselves, she took me around, introducing me to some of the media arts luminaries attending the symposium and to staff at the Lab. This was the first of many examples of her unsparing generosity. It was during the symposium that I fully entered her energized sphere of influence there in Finland, where we had a number of memorable dialogues around the ethics and creative possibilities of the rapidly expanding field of electronic media in which she was a thought pioneer. As Associate Professor at the Lab, she later facilitated my return in the spring of 1995 to teach a four-week course. And a few years following that, she was totally supportive of the course netculture that I developed and taught at the Lab in 2000-2001. Her parallel trans-disciplinary course, “Cultural Usability,” critically examined new media design that was inclusive of sociological, cultural, and technological perspectives. Years earlier in 1987, she was the founding Director of MUU, the ‘alternative’ arts organization that has since been a major international player in new media arts. And two years later, she was a founding member of AV-arkki yet another power-house media arts resource and artists’ association there in Finland.
In those earlier days of our acquaintance (and of the WWW itself), her research and art work around spatial metaphors in virtuality, the aesthetics of immersion, and the dynamics of interaction and consumption were of special interest to me, as she explored the fundamentals of human relation as mediated by this ‘new’ technology. She made some highly original and deep dives into the aesthetic and ethical dimensions in the design of spaces for interaction. And all the while, she worked as a facilitator of human encounter, organizing, producing, and participating in many subsequent events, culminating with the formation of another cultural NGO, m-cult in 2000. Right up to the present, m-Cult has exerted a strong influence on the international critical engagement of culture with technology, leading with a profound sense of humane social activism. Yet another influential expression of her energies.
I never made a portrait of her and there seem to be only a handful of poor digital traces. She was a bit shy and soft-spoken. I have a vague memory of the epic RinneRadio concert at ISEA and a huge crowd dancing away, Minna included. She knew how to have an expansive time! That she is gone is yet another loss to many of us who are still pacing about this stage. Minna you will be fondly remembered and deeply missed.
[ED: I will add any reflections and comments from others to this posting as they surface. I’ve been reaching out to friends and former colleagues from those former life-changing times.]
Let them believe
Let everything that’s been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it’s tender and pliant. But when it’s dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.
Tarkovsky, A., 1980. Stalker, Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/.
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.
Werner Herzog suggests:
1. Always take the initiative.
2. There is nothing wrong with spending a night in jail if it means getting the shot you need.
3. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey.
4. Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief.
5. Learn to live with your mistakes.
6. Expand your knowledge and understanding of music and literature, old and modern.
7. That roll of unexposed celluloid you have in your hand might be the last in existence, so do something impressive with it.
8. There is never an excuse not to finish a film.
9. Carry bolt cutters everywhere.
10. Thwart institutional cowardice.
11. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
12. Take your fate into your own hands.
13. Learn to read the inner essence of a landscape.
14. Ignite the fire within and explore unknown territory.
15. Walk straight ahead, never detour.
16. Manoeuvre and mislead, but always deliver.
17. Don’t be fearful of rejection.
18. Develop your own voice.
19. Day one is the point of no return.
20. A badge of honor is to fail a film theory class.
21. Chance is the lifeblood of cinema.
22. Guerrilla tactics are best.
23. Take revenge if need be.
24. Get used to the bear behind you.
Cronin, P., 2012. Herzog on Herzog, Faber & Faber Ltd.
Stan’s lectures
Stan starts a lecture on George Méliès thus:
Now let me say it to you—simply as I can: the search for an art . . . . either in the making or the appreciation . . . . is the most terrifying adventure imaginable: it is a search always into unexplored regions; and it threatens the soul with terrible death at every turn; and it exhausts the mind utterly; and it leaves the body moving, moving endlessly through increasingly unfamiliar terrain: there is NO hope of return from the territory discovered by this adventuring; and there is NO hope of rescue from the impasse where such a search may leave one stranded.
Brakhage, S., 1972. The Brakhage lectures: Georges Méliès, David Wark Griffith, Carl Theodore Dreyer, Sergei Eisenstein, Chicago: The GoodLion. Available for free at UbuWeb
I love the drama that was always wrapped up in a straight up sense of the absurd of what he was saying despite it being something of a truth — I can just hear his voice, and now can really regret that I never recorded any of his classes or our conversations back when (my spacious graduate-student office/studio was next door to his office/studio cubbyhole for a couple years — the very place he made many of his hand-painted films). I still have my class notes, and some of the letters we exchanged after I moved to Iceland. To be such a teacher, unafraid of anything except The Void that he faced down with bold fist-shaking.
Wednesday, 08 May, 1963
Decided to try working up an analysis of the system made up of the telescope – grating – photo material – photo processing – film-reading combination. Apparently the existing combinations have been pushed to the limit, particularly of the photo materials. “… the advance of astronomical photography during the last decade result more from instrumental and technical advances that fundamental changes in the properties of sensitive emulsions.” From p.71 of Astronomical Photography by de Vaucouleurs, Macmillan, 1961 (522.63, V462a). From p.88, “It seems, therefore reasonable to expect that in the not too distant future, considerable advances will be realized in indirect photography which will make possible its practical use in astronomy. Thus after more than a century of continual advance, astronomical photography seems to be once again on the threshold of a brilliant future.”
52° Overcast
While waiting for Harry Sussman I mowed about 1/3 of the front lawn. He wanted to drive around by the Mardan Devel Corp Concord subdivision to see the new homes, on the way to work.
Talked to MR. Hussey re: The Brucewood Streets. His latest is that the trustee concerned is preparing a subdivision plan that would be carried out after removal of the gravel. Lack of such a plan was the reason for rejection of his application for permission to remove the gravel.
Hot & sticky in the PM.
It developed that DCH didn’t hand in a book report that was due Monday, so I made him get busy; by 10 PM he had written 2 drafts, neither fulfilling the assignment. I’ll have him write another tomorrow.
Picked up the Ford; it steers quite nicely. They did not set the steering wheel so the turn signals function properly, nor did they have the body work done. I’ll plan to take it back next Tuesday.
JCH has a fever.
Monday, 22 April, 1963
Took my QPR draft to Dr. McNamara who thot it should be on one page. Rewrote it, leaving out the table of equipment parameters. Called Major Dalton for certain details.
Ground & flight tests completed on 24 June ’63
Equip. installation completed on 27 May ’63
No time to schedule for more than 30 days of training at Bendix.
Film from the acceptance tests w/b processed at Aerojet-General, Azusa. No decision made on where spectral films will be processed. “A told to go back and study their proposal some more.”(!)
Finally talked to Ed Chatterton at 3 PM and he had a text at 4 PM saying essentially what was said in the QPR of 15 February, as he feels strongly. I’ll research this and talk to both Ed & Frank tomorrow with a compromise text referencing the 15 Feb. statement.
moving visual thinking
After attending the Brakhage Symposium a few weeks ago, I run across this excerpt from Bruce Elder. It’s a little dense.
Brakhage has even argued that artistic forms relate to our embodied nature. The relation is most obvious in rhythmic forms, for all rhythm, he insists, derives from the throbbing of the heartbeat. Brakhage believes that physiology is what ultimately determines what we see. He believes, too, that physiology has a large role in determining what forms artists produce. The conception of cinema that he offered from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, that cinema can present what he calls “moving visual thinking,” he also bases on a notion of the body, for this idea of cinema proposes that film’s great strength is that it alone among art media can present the prime matter of thought before it passes through the filter of language. Adults are ordinarily unaware of the prime matter of thought but, he maintains, a fetus or infant is. This prime matter derives immediately from the synapses and reflects the nature of corporeal processes. At times Brakhage even identifies this thought matter with changes in the nervous system and so insists that his films actually present the “sparking of the synapses” or “the light in the brain.” He even avers that his films do not present pictures of moving visual thinking but convey the energies of moving visual thinking itself. One of the poets and poetic theorists Brakhage has read most avidly is Charles Olson. Olson’s poetics were fundamentally anti-mimetic, and his antimimeticism rested on his claim that a poem generally does not depict what it is about but, rather, by reawakening the energies of an experience in a reader’s body, actually recreates the experience. One suspects this fundamental proposition had a significant role in shaping Brakhage’s ideas on moving visua1 thinking. more “moving visual thinking”
Brakhage film loop machine
Monday, 18 March, 1963
Talked to Harry Sussman for most of the morning, describing my trip to Kwaj & Maui.
Discussed TRAP III w/ Carl Neilson in the PM; he is phasing out of this activity — EE Rich of A ES will be in tomorrow and I should get together. CN disturbed that A had not taken hold of the film processing problem, but had agreed to the processing of the film from the shakedown by Aerojet-General at Azusa. We had some short disc re: Eric Durand, who as a responsible individual at A SB has already irritated others. The optical activity doesn’t seem to have widespread support, probably because there is a real question of operational payoff. It seems to me that an optical group should be formed at L2 to back up the field work and to provide an organized center of optical work and resources; or else get out of it. If it can make a valid contribution to re-entry physics, this should be recognized for what it is.
Picked up my re-entry photo — it’s quite good!
OC
40˚F at 8 AM
Call from Fred Lake about 11:30 AM re: installation of the new hi freq & bass reflex speakers — the ceiling hole for the lowering of the illuminated cross is in the way — they need a few more inches. I suggested that they sink both units into the vertical plaster wall. Called John Svara, who was unable to get Mr. Muirhead, our consulting engineer. He finally set tomorrow at 10:30 AM as the assembly time for all concerned, so I phoned this to George Costello, Mr. Lake’s man.
Worked on income taxes — can’t find my certificate in the Canadian Alumina Corp., as it is being liquidated and I need to take the loss.
Also can’t find the receipted bill from the Pittsburg Plate Glass Co. re: the porch door replacement.
Meunzinger Auditorium
Meunzinger Lobby
Tuesday, 19 February, 1963
Arrived at San Berdoo at 0640, took a shower at a motel and them talked to Major Dalton for two hours on the problem or processing the TRAP III spectral films; I pointed out that there is distinct payoff from having Bendix be responsible for films & instrument calibration, and film processing. He agreed to this, and that it should come up at the next TD mtg. on 26-7 Feb at Lockheed/Ontario.
I spent about 30 minutes w/ Al Saiget at A. He apparently can’t communicate w/ his facilities people on the need for film processing capability.
Went in to CIT & the Mt. Wilson Observatory on the 813 Santa Barbara in Pasadena. Olin Wilson said he works with the originals always. He thot that their William Miller, SYcamore6-4351 (area 213) would have numbers on the loss of density as copies are made.
Talked to ELE at Skyways.
Clear at Barstow
Smog at SB
Train 45 minutes late — arrived at 0645. Got up at 0500, packed, ate, and then watched the sun rise from the dome car as the train wound down Cajon Pass. I saw the big cut that includes at least one edge of the San Andreas Fault.
Had lunch w/ JL, and then went into CIT & the Pasadena Hq of Mt. Wilson. Then went down to the Skyways Motel & checked in. Picked up some food, ate, turned in the car, and to bed early.
Friday, 15 February, 1963
Call from a Lockheed Aircraft Corp. chap who was inquiring about the DPC, no doubt put on it by Mr. Quinlan at Lockheed/Vandenburg. I referred him to Lt. Col. Parker at HqBSD/Norton.
Checked out a stop watch #449 indicating tenths of seconds.
Spoke at length w/ Frank McNamara on the TRAP III operation. He agreed that it would be quite desirable to keep Bendix in on the job, and agreed that it would be good to ask or suggest to Major Dalton that Bendix be responsible for as much as possible up to and including the processing of film.
Rode to Lab w/ Harry S. so I could go after the Ford, which I did on the 3 PM shuttle. The battery was cold-soaked and had to be boosted. Picked up a few rolls of film at the Coop and 3 tubes for the radio at the Radio Shack. Ate a sandwich and apple in the car at the Kendall Square parking lot.
Went over to PSC and talked w/ JAC & KO re: the audio system. After 2 hours of talking we were able to get Ken to agree to putting in an Altec multicellular HF & bass speaker system. He apparently has no feel at all for an audio system with anything other than the cheapest components.
Met JAH & NJH at 9 PM & went home. They had gone in on the train for a Valentine’s Party.
Tuesday, 12 February, 1963
The LA trip was cancelled about 12:30 PM in favor of a date around 27-28 February. I then called JLV for the dates of interest; they are classified but if I were at Kwaj 18-28 February this should be adequate. ELE thinks I should do this first. So do I.
Regarding the Trap III Activity, it seems to me that there are three problems: 1) The calibration of the equipment b4 and after each event; 2) Operation during the event; 3) Film processing. If it could be worked out that Bendix would be responsible for delivering processed film to, say, the BSD Project Officer at WSMR, soon after each event, the production of reliable data would be greatly facilitated.
32˚F
Snow
Ride in with H.S. My, but he is a slow driver; it took until 0855 to get to the office!
LA trip cancelled for business reasons at 12:45 PM, so I went in to PSC on the 1 PM shuttle. Located 5 holes for the M20 mike by offsets from the bldg center line. Gave these to Mr. Muirhead, who was on the job at the time. Ret’d. on the 3:05 PM shuttle.
A snow & ice storm left an accumulation of 4″ or so, and two birch on our neighbor’s lot were bent over the driveway. The birch in the rock garden in front of the house were bent over also. I made some exposures with the 4×5 on B&W and the Retina using Kodachrome II, both with the flash gun. It will be instructive to see how they turn out, as I don’t know what the correct guide numbers are. On the basis of an ECPS value of 1200, I calculated a new table of values of Guide numbers.
a little bit
Yup, a little bit of personality disorder will go a long way to stir things up in the idiosyncrasy department! Last evening, completely choking on creative output. It’s gotten to be too much of a predictable process. When not “out there” i.e., when ‘stuck’ in a single location, working at a jay-oh-bee, creative impulses narrow significantly. Acquisition of material becomes a spotty and herky-jerky affair. Squeezing bits of expression out during rare interludes. Oh, got a day ‘off’? Gonna work. Gotta work. With potential dislocation to Europe looming, only 3.5 months away or so. I only wish that the Brico/Pixelache project was two weeks later. It’s going to be a stress to get packed up, moved out, and on a plane in time to get to Helsinki by the 16th of May. Then, what to do after that — head first to Kiel, then to Koln and NRW, and then to Berlin and on to Lithuania if that works out. Then back to the US for long enough to tour a bit and then use the fall to hunt for a post-doc position in Europe. or Asia.
The Singapore gigs look interesting, but hmmm, that’s a whole ‘nother world! Have to research it a bit more. Back to the idiosyncrasy issue — this will make the search for a living venue all the more difficult. So far nothing has come along except at the microscopic level of individual encounters with Others, and the energized dances/dialogues that occur as the kernel of those encounters.
And another Brakhage Salon (“Celebrating Stan”) screening last night courtesy of Saranjan Ganguly who has continued the salons that Stan began years ago. It’s ten years since he passed now.
Spring Cycle, 1995
Visions in Meditation, #3, Plato’s Cave, 1990
Commingled Containers, 1997
Thot Fal’n, 1978
The Lion and Zebra Make God’s Raw Jewels, 1999
23rd Psalm Branch Part 1, 1966
Talk of passing, former inspiration, I wonder what Freshman film student Tara thinks about the grey-heads talking about a fallen giant. The works are mostly fine to see, several I’d not seen before.
There is a Brakhage Symposium happening in March that I will participate in, as usual, not on the official bill, but rather as professional (and rather unique) participant. Former student of Stan’s, colleague, and the guy who got him a custom knit Icelandic sweater!
Friday, 01 February, 1963
Rec’d ELE’s note to WIW re: the TRAP III Spectral Film Calibration & Processing,” enumerating what I’m supposed to get done.
Made arrangements w/ Henry Lane to use a 35 mm SR camera for the Kwaj trip, and left a draft memo VAN/to J. W. Ewers requesting issuance of a camera pass.
Picked up what looks like a fine book “Space Mechanics,” by Nelson & Loft. It seems to have the irreducible elements in 245 pages.
Worked on the film specs table.
Clear -1˚F
My, it’s nice to have some cash again!
Call from Ed Poore wanting a speech reinforcement set-up in the Hawey Room on Tuesday next for the Church Annual Meeting. He said Ken Olsen had put the gear together for the ’62 Annual Mtg. I called Ken and he said he put up to more speakers in the Hawey Room, and had several mikes feeding the present amplifier now located in Doug Rafter’s office. I’ll try to connect this tomorrow.
Borrowed a tape writer from Dave Moore’s office so I can put labels on the various audio panels.
Read some of “Modern Physics for the Engineer.”
Thursday, 31 January, 1963
It seems to me that A will have to do the same as we intended to do in order to get a capability by 1 June — i.e. to hire a contractor to do the programming, etc. Al Saiget wanted to put the entire photo processing area at A San Bernadino, it seems logical to me to put it there — the entire data processing facility at Holloman. But of course Durrand won’t do this; it makes too much sense!
ELE came into inform me to continue on the photo operation but to include an attempt to coordinate the L2 on the mode of operation of the TRAP III aircraft by Bendix to include initially the production of the requisite number of rolls of completely processed film and deposit them with the BSD Project Engineer at White Sands.
Obtained a copy of the argument on roles between L2 & A, dated 17 January ’63.
Talked to Carl Nielsen re: above Chatterton has issued a Confidential memo to VAN on 1) lack of a deal, 2) lack of a plan for TRAP III Operation.
Overcast +14˚F
Took LCH into BU via Sears where I picked up a rebuilt carburetor for the Ford. On the way over to BU from Sears the clutch ball stud bolt parted and made it impossible to shift gears as the clutch became inoperative. I had to go over to the Jeep agency — Luby Chevrolet — on Commonwealth Avenue to get the replacement parts. It was about 5 PM when I left the gas station where the work was done. LCH went on over to BU via the subway.
Stopped at Elbery’s to see the Ford. The rear fenders & quarter panels are on and the skirt above the rear bumper fixed. Asked to have the left front door lock fixt so the door will open. I’ll stop Saturday and get the right front door, the hole in floor inside in front, the right body bolt near the right rear door loosened, and the electric w/w motion.
Worked on layout of the darkroom.
Read in P2 a little w/ CR.
LCH registered for social studies.
Had made an appmnt w/ Fred Lake to discuss PSC, but car trouble prevented my making it.
Tuesday, 29 January, 1963
Worked with the A contingent all day. Spent the AM in going over the Facility Criteria with Dave Moore, Paul Gaudette, ELE, and 3 A chaps. In the afternoon, I went over to the premises of Information International at Maynard to see a film reader. On the way back, a stop was made at D. W. Mann’s to see the microdensitometer. It will be shipped to Kwajalein in about a month.
Made arrangements to work with Allen Saiget in the AM.
Clear +1˚F
Monday, 28 January, 1963
Worked on the problem of exactly why we need precise control of the photo process. Random fluctuations in the process may occur during the processing of an event film, so it is necessary to have an intimate knowledge of the operation.
Took Ford to Elbery’s after taking out the rear deck and some of the side panels. I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t cost over $300.
Was given the Salk oral polio vaccine at 11:55 AM
We had some disc. w/ CR after dinner relative to pre-destination. It was inspired by disc. in his English of the poem “On His Being Arrived to the Age of Twenty-Three” by John Milton. It seems the teacher thot it referred to predestination, altho’ I don’t see it. CR thot that all he had to do to get to heaven is to “do good works”! We pointed out that John 3:16 does not mention good works at all! He really has a problem!
How soon hath Time the suttle theef of youth,
Stoln on his wing my three and twentith yeer!
My hasting dayes flie on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arriv’d so near,
And inward ripenes doth much less appear,
That som more timely-happy spirits indu’th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure eev’n,
To that same lot, however mean, or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav’n;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Taskmasters eye.
Wednesday, 23 January, 1963
Spent the day with W. E. White of the Physics Lab, and Sheldon Phillips, talking about densitomoters w/ digitizers. I was shown 3 sets of gear. One used EKCo Type 31 optics, for A/D an HP digitizing VM w/ card punch output, and an x-y plotter. Another used a Coleman A/D, a M/H XY plotter & 526 Punch. Several samples were obtained (cards & data). Apparently +/- .02 density is about as close as the limits of gear, film, & processing will permit.
Also explored two questions phone over by ELE: 1) What is the recommended location of the photo processing in relation to the base of the a/c?, and 2) can the processed film be shipped w/o deterioration? He wanted answers to these phoned to Capt. Black at BSD. On 1) No particular location; the latent image fades some on the first few minutes after processing. If the exposed film is stored according to the ASA standard, the changes are relatively small. On 2) The changes in density are quite small for processed film; changes in dimension can be serious if no marks are on each frame.
Snow
Cold
Car wouldn’t start, so got it pushed ($2.00). It was badly flooded. Then went to Sears and bought a new battery as the (+) terminal was broken out of the case on the old one.
Snowing all day with slippery roads.
Drove out to Hamlin Beach to see the Lake in a storm. The beach is gravel — and with many hills and what looked like a steep bank at the water’s edge.
Friday, 11 January, 1963
In addition to the mt’l on p. 9, what is needed is some method of making the electron beam responsive to the content or characteristics of the wake. My original idea was in connection with the microdensitometer, to provide films of greater resolution. Apparently the duplication of an optical spectrum by electromagnetic means is not possible!
Talked to Bill Daly, Travel Office, re: more insurance for my pending trip to Kwaj; he obviously thinks what they have is enough. This is not so, particularly when my own insurance is void over the last leg, as it is via a non-common carrier and not MATS. He phoned the Goorich Agency who wrote the $50 K policy that MIT now has on test personnel on a per-flight basis. Mr. G. said he would call back — this at 0900.
Called Mr. Shaner at EKCo/Hollywood re: conversion of the machine S/N 113. He will call back. Mr. Ryan did at 2:55 PM; the machine is a 16/35 spray type & can be converted.
Clear
Rain in PM
Called the Leo C. Perkins Co. CE5-8040 re: heating my library floor with electricity; their units for snow melting would not be applicable; he (Jacko) will call back if he finds something useful.
Went in to PSC for the Trustees mtg. The roof & truss repairs will cost about $115K and may be finished by Easter but we aren’t sure. It was voted 11 to 6 to hire the outside consultant suggested by Dr. Andreason to ascertain & state the needs of the church. In my opinion this is a waste of money for a church to engage in this sort of activity in view of the guidance of the Bible and prayer.
JAH & NJH went in with me.
Monday, 17 December, 1962
Checked in to Mr. Swann’s office at 0910, leaving the car in an Esso station for a lube job. After some preliminaries, Mr. S. Phillips took me to the Physics Div. of the Research Lab — a Mr. Eisen who gave me a lecture on sensitometry & densitometry. I took 3 pages of notes. Had lunch at Kodak Park. Before lunch listened to the Rochester Orchestra play in the Kodak Theater; it was wonderful. Ret’d. to Mr. Eisen’s ofc. for a tour of his laboratory where he showed me some of the densitometers and sensitometers used in routine processing of film. I’m not sure I understand the spectral sensitometer.
Overcast
Rain
In Rochester.
Heard the Rochester Civic Orchestra at the Kodak Park Theater; it was real good. Also saw the audio center; it has Altec equipment and Ampex recorders; and it is located adjacent to the lighting control center. The audio center is separated from the auditorium by a curtain that is drawn when it is to be partitioned from the auditorium.
Picked up a loaf of brown bread made at the Trappist Monastery.
Saturday, 15 December, 1962
Spent a little time at the office in working out questions for use Monday at EKCo.
Overcast
Went to L2 for awhile in the AM.
Then took LCH & the children in to the annual Christmas Party. Picked up another roll of 16mm film, a new door check for the rear screen & storm door, 20 qts. or oil at Sears. After this, which took 2 hours, I stopped at PSC and went up to the attic to see if I could find the Altec preamp and put it back into service, but to no avail. After returning home, I called Bernie Stiff, who alerted the foreman for Thomas O’Connor Const. Co., but he couldn’t find it.
Wednesday, 12 December, 1962
It seems to me that we must have the services of a photographic consulting engineer to lay out our plant. I’m going to have to go to Rochester again, and get drawings & specs for the plant at Vandenberg.
Spoke with DM on the need for a photographic consulting capability on the part of A & E. He had not included this in his original statement of A & E qualifications. We will have to add this at the first mtg. with the A & E.
Had some discussion w/ Larry Cianciolo on the calibration of spectral films: a series of exposures on the same film is made b4 & after data collection, with none or a different density filter for each frame w/ the same calibration Light source. This calibration process must take place for the UV CineSpectrographic & the Hulcher spectral camera. The objective is to measure & hold constant the gamma of the film during the entire process.
Tried to get Sheldon Phillips on the phone but couldn’t.
Cold
10˚F
Phoned two questions re: the Brucewood Streets to Mr. Hussey:
1) What happens if there it a vote on Art. 14 on the Agenda for the Town Mtg. of 17 Dec.? He had been assured by Mr. McCabe that there would be no reference to our streets; 2) Will the Auditors Committee provide a labor & mtls. bond for completing the streets? He thot not on this. I made copies of the Agenda pages that were appropriate & sent them Special Del. to Mr. H.
Went to Boy Scout mtg. left the First Class write-up w/ the Chairman, Mr. Schadt. Took JAH to her piano lesson.
screening: Jeanne Liotta
Make a pilgrimage to Longmont to the Firehouse Arts Center to catch an evening screening of work by a CU Film Studies faculty-member Jeanne Liotta. I had met her the evening before at another university-sponsored cultural event. Alex had mentioned there was a reception/opening in the Rare Books Room of the Library, and, as a professional nomadic cultural participant (and observer), I thought I’d check it out. Turns out it was the effort of a Humanities class that had curated a small show of works from the collection of artist’s books that Lucy Lippard had given to the University. Strangely enough two of the pieces in the exhibition are from old friend/networker node, Paul Rutkovsky (aka. floridada). I talked to some of the student curators about Paul, Lucy, and about networking. I was lucky to have been doing my MFA at CU-Boulder when Lucy was in residence and received some of her teachings. Age brings the role of information carrier, holder of historical perspective and knowing, story-teller. No corner on wisdom, but at least some stories are related. I query the kids about what their thinking is about the use of photocopy machines as art tools. This is a very novel idea for them (given they only know the digital type of photocopy machines at most, not the old analog devices). Paper output is novel in itself. I don’t have much documentation online of some of the prior (ancien-régime!) photocopy-based projects I’ve run: just The Xerox Book that included mp3 files of the accompanying collaborative audio cassette mix, unfortunately there are no scans of the 300 actual pages … some day I’ll get to that corner of the archive & revive it in the digital zone.
At any rate, Jeanne’s work dances around cosmology, astronomy, and very much the syntax of the various filmic media she plays with — from Second Life pieces to found footage, analog and digital to Ray-o-gram-printed 35mm film stock. The sonic accompaniments well synergize with the visuals. I missed not seeing some of the analog film pieces in their original form (vs digital reproductions), as most of the pieces are (at least in part) deeply about what mediation they are conveyed upon. (Not that that aspect is meant to completely frame them materialistically: it’s only one order of correlation.) There are plenty of other resonant aspects and sources: the eclipse, the sky, the procession of stellar energies, the transposition of Light from various enigmatic sources onto halating film substrates: she always maintains an alchemical and, consequently, an experimental edge through her attention to immediate and spontaneous situation. This sensitivity is combined with an aware curiosity of phenomenon: yielding Light works that are simultaneously playful and yet connected to/suffused with an insistent and sometimes overwhelming gravity. Escaping the gravitational field of be-ing requires an empathy for the intense sadness that pervades our current times: this potential is achieved on occasion and reminded me of the intent of Bruce Elder’s magnum opus “The Book of All the Dead” and the constant struggle against the gravity of it all, in search of Light. It goes ever back to Simone Weil’s “Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.”
Jeanne talking about film
Sunday, 02 December, 1962
Came in at 2:25 PM and made layout of film processing plant; also made estimate of personnel and annual ops cost.
Overcast
Took DCH, JAH, & NJH to SS & church. We couldn’t get much output from the Altec, so asked Ed Poor to call Mr. Lake in the AM tomorrow to check it over.
Spoke briefly with John Zvara and Bernie Stiff re: the future plans for the church that were discussed by all the officers during the week. Each had a different story.
Ken Olsen wants to tie the lower church rooms, the Mayflower, under balcony, and tape to the radio output.
Saturday, 01 December, 1962
![portrait, John and May at their 50th wedding Anniversary, South Acton, Massachusetts, December 1962 [MCM]](https://neoscenes.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/1962/12/1000/19621201-B-0122p.jpg "portrait, John and May at their 50th wedding Anniversary, South Acton, Massachusetts, December 1962 [MCM]")
Clear
warm
warm
Went to Cambridge and picked up a 4×5 film pack adapter, 2 photo floods, a 4×5 Tri-X film pack, and 2-100′ rolls Super Anscochrome.
LCH, Mary & Edith held the 50th Anniversary wedding party for John & May MacKenzie. About 90 attended! — in our house. Everything went very smoothly, thanks to a very efficient organization.
NCAR movie
Monday, 25 December, 1961
Clear in morning
Fourteen inches of snow fell, but we didn’t try working on the driveway until the middle of the afternoon.
JCH was given the usual toys and for once he was quiet! I took some movies, but there wasn’t enough light for Kodachrome.
The ice & snow in the trees is breath-taking in the brilliant sunlight! I took a few feet outside and some 35mm color & B&W.
We all worked on the driveway. I’ll have to fix the Toro soon.
Saturday, 15 July, 1961
Overcast
Worked all day on car wiring it for the trailer.
Tuned a few more piano notes in the evening. It looks as if I’ll have to readjust every bass and tenor key in addition to regulating the whole action. This will have to be done again when the key dip is adjusted.
DCH birthday — Mrs. Rhodes took he & David to Lowell to see Ben Hur; DCH arrived home at 0145 AM.
Sunday, 02 April, 1961
Took family & Bill Klauer to the 0900 service. It was fine, and included a brass group from the Boston Symphony. Drove back home to take Bill home, Al going with us. We then went over to his house for a family dinner. I shot 15 feet of movie film between snow flurries.
Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog
The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realize the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of tele-presence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the re-invigoration of the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favor of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style. As current systems of hyper-mobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits – most prominently in the intense debate on global warming – citizens and organizations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced tele-presence technologies.
ElectroSmog and the quest for a sustainable immobility
The ElectroSmog festival for sustainable immobility, staged in March 2010 [1], was both an exploration of this grand promise of tele-presence and a radical attempt to create a new form of public meeting across the globe in real-time. ElectroSmog tried to break with traditional conventions of staging international public festivals and conferences through a set of simple rules: No presenter was allowed to travel across their own regional boundaries to join in any of the public events of the festival, while each event should always be organized in two or more locations at the same time. To enable the traditional functions of a public festival, conversation, encounter, and performance, physical meetings across geographical divides therefore had to be replaced by mediated encounters.
The festival was organized at a moment when internet-based techniques of tele-connection, video-telephony, visual multi-user on-line environments, live streams, and various forms of real-time text interfaces had become available for the general public, virtually around the globe. No longer an object of futurology ElectroSmog tried to establish the new critical uses that could be developed with these every day life technologies, especially the new breeds of real-time technologies. The main question here was if a new form of public assembly could emerge from the new distributed space-time configurations that had been the object of heated debates already for so many years?
more “Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog”
From The Regime of Amplification to The Road
[editor: this document was used for a mid-way doctoral assessment at the University of Technology Sydney and no longer reflects the final content of the PhD dissertation as of the April 2012 submission at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The presentation was accompanied by the video that is posted at the end.]
Abstract
The DCA project “The Road” is a psycho-geographic perambulation through a web of personal, social, and universal trajectories which form a new knowledge-base on the cosmos as an entropic system of energy flows. Within this worldview the project explores human presence, encounter, and interaction including a close look at the effects of techno-socially prescribed protocols on those indeterminate flows of energy. As a multi-modal online data-space, the project offers a variety of navigational strategies connecting a rich variety of audio, video, text, and image sources from the candidate’s extensive personal archive of creative material.
Introduction
The armature for this DCA as originally proposed was the concept of the amplifier. An amplifier is essentially a device that takes an incoming flow of energy (signal), and through an influx of power, generates a defined outflow of energy with a greater (directed) intensity. The amplification process needs an independent energy source to increase the signal strength. It also requires a set of protocols that guide the flow of energy from input through output: a coherent signal is a controlled energy flow as defined by applied protocols.
The road, as an expression of a techno-social system (TSS), exemplifies, or, more precisely, is one of these protocol-defined pathways. It was this realization during the last year of research which shifted my focus from the amplifier to the road as both a real and metaphoric concept that opens a rich space for inquiry. The road allows the TSS to express amplified energy flows along its protocol-defined pathway. It is not difficult to conceptually extend the idea of the road as any pathway for the directed and concentrated expression of energy of a TSS. more “From The Regime of Amplification to The Road”
leaving and heading south
Leaving when done with breakfast and cleaning and packing. A couple rituals yet — gathering some sage and some yellow Weber sandstone powder. A beautiful sojourn. The place is so rich, so un-circumscribable, no matter how many dances of words one would make around it. Best is the ability to press into the body the power of be-ing and the power of life. And Light. And the gravity of the earth. Fundamentals to the heart. The drift of cloud and shift of wider weather patterns, leaving Light on upturned face, changing all the time.
Maybe put out a call next spring to have others join. Then again, maybe not…
more “leaving and heading south”
CLUI: Day Seventeen — Bonneville
There is a large (black) raven (Corvus corax) who is in residence in the Enola Gay Hangar. There are some major areas of the roof and sides of the hangar where the corrugated sheeting has (surely!)been blown off over the years, so the interior is exposed to the elements and to natural energies. This raven (or two) is in residence somewhere high in the iron girders. Much of each day, especially during morning and evening, the raven is seen flying very purposefully between the hangar and a spot some 200 meters east of the hangar where there are some low scrubby bushes and open ground. (S)he flies back and forth not far from the window that I look out from on occasion as I work when inside the residency unit. Movement out the window catches my attention and about half the time it is the raven making this low and very determinate transit between the hangar and this spot. Occasionally the movement will be from the ground squirrel couple who has taken up residence in the underbelly of the Airstream, and otherwise, the few lizards will do their peculiar dances across the gravelly yard when it is warm; and lately, a handful of very small birds will spend the early evening hours, before sunset, picking aphids off the salt brush bush growing in the yard. But it is the raven who is most compelling. Back and forth. Before I leave, I want to hang out in the watch-tower and simply observe the flight cycle. I reckon (s)he’s gathering sticks for a nest, but I haven’t clearly seen anything in his/her beak on the flights back to the hangar, so it’s a question: what’s ‘e doin’? Actually it could be a pair of them, they are know to find a partner and mate for life. Hmmm, novel idea…
The ground squirrel pair is another matter. They’re gaining access to the otherwise pretty solid and gapless lower framework of the Airstream via the fold-out step area below the front door. There are also areas for critters to enter via the electrical and water hookup doors. One of those has a broken latch, so I think I will tap and screw that one down semi-permanently as the vehicle isn’t going to be moved anytime soon.
Neal and I head out to the Bonneville Flats towards evening. I want to cycle and he has some filming to do. Amazing Light. I cycle for about an hour, going about 8-10 miles out and then back. Hard to tell, dimensions are reduced to time alone (and body metrics). About five miles out there is a cluster of vehicles, apparently a photo shoot happening. Cycling down the ‘main drag’ of the speed-test area is a singular experience. Speed becomes necessary to overcome the lack of Cartesian cues, no pathway. Got to get somewhere. Got to approach those little specks in the distance. Oh, those are cars, sure takes a long time to get closer. Hit some areas where the salt is wet and there are loose crystals which splatter all over me. It mostly appears like ice, so brain is thinking danger! slick!, but it is quite the opposite, sticky like climbing on limestone.
The accompanying images are suffering from more digital camera woes — dust on the CCD. Absolutely disgusting. I don’t have a proper removal kit, and this Nikon model doesn’t have one of the vibrating sensors that can dislodge that extremely irritating blobs that end up on the sensor despite me never taking the lens off. Yet another disappointment with this Nikon (D200) — for the price paid it is real garbage compared to the old analog F2as and even Nikkormats from the 1970’s. I never had dust-on-film problems like this, ever! Neal has a nice Canon SLR system from his university, along with a HD 3-CCD chip DV cam. I’m jealous.
Friday, 25 December, 1959
We all enjoyed a good Christmas, going to church in the morning. I took a number of movies of JCH and the family.
here, there, etc
the play of reification. when mind stops, not confronted by any particular obstacles, but merely by an inertial lag. lacking the energy to proceed. while outside weather changes, un-noticed, unless it is rain. it has fallen below the threshold of modern awareness. inside people. like writing here. slipped by the side of lived be-ing.
wander over to to the Art Gallery of NSW to catch a screening of Gimme Shelter. flashing-back to Ancien Régime of mid-century Amurika, seeing the radical youth of that time — youth who are now retiring boomers fighting to keep a big slice of pie — what’s theirs by right, eh? bah!
a stroll out to Sculpture by the Sea, an uneven sprinkling of expressions placed along the Bondi-Bronte path. Shar says the water is 19.5C, gettin’ there. I’ll be in before long. inflammatory Thai dinner after that.
Willy and Andy unveiled a new blog, a collaborative effort covering “absolutely everything.” Welcome to the blogosphere folks!
Temp°Sauna
Mika arrives back in town a few days ago from Newcastle and presenting Temp°Sauna at electrofringe (part of the this is not art event). the Nordic Embassy finds out and asks him to present the project — in the foyer of the Dendy Cinemas right on Circular Quay next door to the Opera — for the opening of a Nordic Film Festival. I cruise by on Thursday to help with the set-up which is a bit tricky because of a blustery wind blowing the entire evening, at one point almost knocking the whole rig over with the red-hot Finnish Army wood stove cranking away. there is a fancy opening with plenty of Finlandia vodka drinks, sushi, and posters from Saab and so on. at any rate, he managed to get a couple of the gals associated with the Embassy to jump in the sauna. I did too, with only one question — when would the next opportunity arise to do a real Finnish wood sauna there on the Quay? it was plenty hot, and we had a good laugh hanging around in towels as did the guests watching us at the opening reception. it’s a nice scene, and so I hang around to help shut everything down after some hours.
back again tomorrow?
Nordic Film Festival reception
technological affectation
If film can do this:
Film serves to train human beings in the practice of those apperceptions and reactions required by the frequentation of an apparatus whose role in their daily life ever increases. To make this whole enormous technological apparatus of our time into the object of human interiorization and appropriation [innervation] — that is the historic task in whose service film has its true meaning. — Walter Benjamin
Then is there any reason to doubt a connection between the declining power and influence of the (technocratic mediocracy of the) United States and the implementation of the Internet as-it-is today? Is there any connection between the tendencies of its population to spend their (limited) life-time in tele-communication (and tele-consumption!) and the demise of civil society? People seemingly now avoid confronting the (unknown) Other and rather cluster as mirrored-Selves, with a cumulative effect of breakdown of a (diverse) cultural fabric into a checker-board of self-interest groupings which spend time defending the borders of their squares from the surrounding Evil unknown.
this conclusion proposed in the sense that if film can have that profundity of affectation on human nervous systems (the primary interface with the world-as-mediated-by-body; or the primary EM antenna-structures), then what of all the wide press of technological development seeping into all parts and orifices of perception and reaction?
Grammophon, Film, Typewriter
Gramophone, film, typewriter, Kittler, Friedrich A., Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, c1999.
keywording, filing
such a massive issue in a trans-disciplinary space. listing everything or nothing or SIPs (Statistically Improbable Phrases). maybe the SIPs would be the best phenomena, as it is a tangible mapping of non-standard word usage … mapping out new conceptual spaces. kind of like those emails from a few years back, spewed out by random text generators (or a thousand drunken monkeys reading the confetti of paper-shredded copies of Naked Lunch and pausing at spontaneously proscribed intervals to jot notes on where precisely those confetti-signs sent their proto-humanoid minds.
Ich bin mit meinem Dasein zufrieden(?)
oder
Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. — Samuel Butler
heavy shuffling through the digital archive and web links to assemble something meaningful via zotero. heavy work, reading reading reading. some semi-classics to remind, and enjoy the luxury of reading to gain or revivify knowledge. Kittler, Grammaphone, Film, Typewriter; Latour, Reassembling the Social; Vygotsky, Thought and Language; McLuhan, Understanding Media, along with reviewing the already substantial library/bibliography assembled on my hard drive from the last 20 years of info-filtering in the media-sphere. dragging copies of all that into Zotero, slowly, along with hundreds of bookmarked sources, and then the keywording begins, starting the cycle. plenty of SIPs there.
such a massive issue in a trans-disciplinary space, etc…
Zotero, an open-source project, by-the-way, a victor today when a Circuit Court judge throws out a law-suit coming from Thomson-Reuters, makers of EndNote, the monopoly research/thesis writing/citation tool out there in academia.
silent selection
Buber’s story illustrating that Silence is communication opens a certain mediatory path. Especially that of listening, a critical reciprocal of expression: the act of open impression. A kind of inversion, equivalent with Simon Weil’s framing of human obligations versus the traditional (and often violent) struggle for human rights. This inversion also maps into the qualities of presence and absence implicit in the mediated technological space. Where scripted and centered Silence is necessary for balanced expression. (Both the silence of meditation and the silence of listening).
Kittler, in Grammaphone, Film, Typewriter: plowing through his expansive, eclectic interwoven threads examining the development of technology and the ensuing affectations on social systems, on people. I perhaps haven’t given him credit previously that he deserves, although I always found his presentations to be too dense to follow (simultaneous translation probably didn’t help — native speakers surely had to focus to follow his thinking). And this book didn’t come out in English until 1999, so wasn’t available when I was crossing his path. He makes clear points on the connection between technological development and war, the contingencies of warfare which don’t merely draw technological systems into a problem-solving process, but actually arise purely out of the need to more effectively, efficiently kill the Other. Optimization of defense, primacy of offense, protection of home-lands, via reducing the potential for the Other to accomplish the same. Natural selection. Is this what drives the techno-social system?
Kittler holds a fascination for these mechanisms, a boyish focus on the tool and on the technological ground of war without once making any moral approbation or moral critique of the way it goes. Has he given up? Does he care? Is he a techno-determinist? Does the intellectual fascination not accept moral argument? Or is the disinterested contemporary academic not allowed to take a moral stance?
another 50th
I stick around for Chris’ 50th as his folks, John and Barbara, also come into town on their way between Iowa and Tucson. nice to catch up with them. Barbara reminds me about her chocolate-chip cookies when she mentions she doesn’t have any with her. this references the care packages she would send to Chris when he and I were room-mates back at 148 Washington in Golden — she would usually include a tin of her fabulous cookies which Chris would share generously. got to snag the recipe someday. or, film her making them.
all this visiting. catching up. exploring territories. hearing stories. mapping out lives. recitations, prognostications on weather and politics and social systems. sampling lives. and seeing time pass forwards inexorably.
keeping up appearances (the cost of social participation), requires energy. energy paid into the system. (was this the lament of the Man?) versus what? appearing as The Self is and allowing for personal idiosyncrasy, proceed with no particular thought as to impact, just to channel what comes in life.
Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART … EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who — from his state of freedom — the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand — learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER. — Joseph Beuys
breakfast burritos
after a breakfast burrito and a couple hours going through the GHS 1976 images at Todd’s to stir our memories, I head south from Fort Lupton to Manitou Springs slowly. pick up that roll of Tri-X film at Reed — the one that sat, undeveloped, for almost a decade. the last roll of black-and-white film shot before shifting to the Sony DCR-PC100 video camera. it turns out to be a full roll of images, and thankfully without fogging despite sub-optimal storage. will scan the mystery shots when I get back to Prescott shortly. I’ve no idea what they are of.
taking in the way on the way. road trip images and sounds. these days, I usually stop for scenes that I perhaps previously would have driven by while noting in head shoulda stopped. I figure these days that I should be making images to somehow — at least conceptually — counter-balance my use of hydrocarbons. that and simply extending the practice of image-making which is so habitual now it risks becoming a stale rather than a vivifying practice. documenting the West as I see it and as I transit the spaces. the faux-windmill-water-station in Ft. Lupton, a darkly amusing iceberg-tip of impending global water issues; the green space appropriately called Greenland; the B-52 bomber at the Air Force Academy looms in the midst of a gathering storm; and sounds that augment a feel for the place.
the weather is strange.
I chill in a cafe in Manitou, catching up on work. it closes, so I head across the street to The Keg Lounge, definitely a local bar and grill (with wifi!). normally I’m not too chatty in such a place, but started to talk to the bartender, and then a young (obviously military) guy comes up ordering some beers for his friends playing pool. turns out he and the friends are deploying to Afghanistan in three days, to some obscure valley in one of the hottest Taliban-contested areas. I believe, without any empirical evidence, that only those who serve at that boots-on-the-ground level in the military have any clue what war really is like. I certainly don’t. war is a black box that I can only assume is full of terrors that only the young are able to flexibly absorb and at least partially master. I buy them a round of drinks and talk with them for awhile. one fellow, an ancient 26-years-old, is on his fifth deployment. he was scheduled to have reconstructive knee surgery in June, but the Army canceled that in order to deploy him. he figures he’ll be crippled by the time his deployment is over. they routinely carry 130-pounds of gear under extremely harsh conditions. a couple of them are first-timers. they harbor a certain bravado, innocence, and apprehension. embodied. I can’t say the encounter made my day, but it felt right in the pit of the belly and in the heart. the War(s) are so invisible to all but those directly involved — War is the legacy of illegitimacy and the fanatic regime that started them.
Greg gets back in from Boulder later so we hang out with his girlfriend, catching up on the pathways taken in the last years gone. hang out in his funky flat on the top floor of the (national historic register) Nolon House including the distinctive round tower. then they are away until tomorrow…
