posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Window Weather

[ed: this is extracted from my dissertation, so some things are unexplained. However, I didn’t want to make large modifications, it’s more a teaser on a novel definition of ‘virtuality’ and the ‘virtual’. To illustrate the principle, and to suggest the relationship humans have with it, I use one particular manifestation of energized (matter): glass]

virtuality, or, 'through the window glass', Reykjavík, Iceland, January 1993

All organisms, humans included, evolve ways of modulating and attenuating the changing flows that are potentially harmful to them. Humans are exceptionally well-adapted to utilize and re-configure available flows to secure incrementally increased viability. In one instance they discovered that they could manipulate the most common forms of energized matter at the surface of the earth — silicon and oxygen, with bits of carbon, sodium, and calcium — to create a substance that was, at human scales, relatively impervious and that could constrict extant or generated flows in a variety of ways. more “Window Weather”

posted
  • place: KCL Campground, Carrizo Plains National Monument, California

change

view south from KCL Campground, Carrizo Plains National Monument, California, December 2010

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

The End of the Road and The Onset of Dreaming

roadside memorial, near Bitter Springs, Arizona, USA, March 2010
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”

posted

CLUI: Day Seven — shorelines

looking north to Pilot Peak, off Rt. 93, near Wendover, Nevada, April 2010
Aim for the nearest topological features to the south, some small intrusives, an isolated fault block, likely, rhyolitic basalts of some sort (with some peridotites or greenstones possibly?). Lake Bonneville paleo-shorelines are visible, with a prominent one slicing the hills like a poorly-made isometric topo model. The hills are technically on the Air Force test range, but I disregard the signs (parking behind some low hills across the road in order not to attract attention).

Definitely a different regime than, say, the Sonoran desert. Here, the land seems more sterile and has only very low scrub, most less than a foot high. Low or black sagebrush (Artemisia), salt brush (Atriplex), rabbit brush, black brush, tumbleweed (Salsola pestifera), and a handful of other species are thinly scattered, with either desert varnish, pebbly sand, or the occasional small colony of cryptobiotic soil. Can’t really tell if this lack is a direct result from severe overgrazing (this is, after all, BLM land) or just a harsh (colder, drier!) regime here compared to the relatively abundant biota of the Sonoran.

Plenty of evidence of other human intrusions on top of the igneous stuff that these hills are made of. Bullet casings, scraps of glass and metal everywhere, bullet holes in anything worth shooting at. Two mines have burrowed into the earth, leaving debris, holes, and mounds, a refrigerator with major firearm damage, a twisted bike frame, and the shattered glass crunching underfoot.

The hills are much larger than they initially appear, a frequent phenomena in a landscape without the normal metrics for scale (trees and human structures). A great view in all directions from the top.

A lake shore sand deposit in the form of a light tan mudflat attracts my attention on the talus-skiing descent, as it is bisected by the old roadbed which exhibits the typical roadbed riparian affect — with visibly larger brush on either side of the eroding pavement — the direct affect of the slight concentration of runoff precipitation. Walking here in the flats one feels … exposed … as the occasional mining truck speeds by a mile or so away. The only relief among short sage brush are the holes dug by coyotes into smaller varmit holes, now that would be something to watch! Good for spraining an ankle if step is not watched closely. The only other difference are the widely scattered aluminum beer cans, mostly effaced of any markings by the brutal sun, sitting pell-mell in the sand.

I notice later that the Nikon has more crap on the CCD, about which nothing can be done — you can see two spots in the lower left center of the images. My irritation with this camera system increases as the years go by. I am constantly astonished at the poor quality of the lens, along with the dirt accumulation on the CCD — it’s a closed system, for god’s sake, how does it keep getting dirty? I don’t even take the lens off, ever! I think the Canon system is superior both optically and technologically. But nothing to be done about it, unless I decide against getting a new laptop and instead get a new camera. Ach, I get tired of technology!

posted

CLUI: Day Four — primary orientation

Enola Gay Hangar, Wendover Airbase, Wendover, Utah, April 2010

Morning comes very rapidly — but not suddenly. I force myself out of bed before sunrise, and, before doing anything else, I climb up the observation tower to check out the view, on the way up I bash my head on a low cross-brace. There is a telescope in a box up there, and I note that the webcam dome has a loose hex-shaped stainless piece inside the dome between the glass and the cam. Will have to check into this. The view is … interesting.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

short refractions

This is the result of our trajectory, what we have done to this point, how we have proceeded: or is our trajectory a result of this? The cumulative affect we have as a form of life on this place. With the messy convolutions of relation that accumulate, stratigraphically, on be-ing. No flat-lying sediment with seasonal and measured pulse. Glacial, tectonic, up-heaving fossil be-ing exposed as scarified, reified tissue. How to excise, erode, release, revive once fluid dreams from these frozen remains. Or is it impossible that once laid down from embodied flow, these traces contain only the form of life gone, drained of all strength, all presence, and any forward driving impulse.

Feigning indifference when chunks of life are covered over, awaiting the slow micro-crystallization of silica replacement. Rendering to glass all that came before. Glass to look at, to look through, and to see refracted life; to see the myriad pretty and terrible colors of it all.

posted

myopia and narrow vision

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.

posted

quick note on virtuality

out the window, ReykjavÌk, Iceland, January 1993

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.)

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

(in) no time

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

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

posted
  • place: Florissant, Colorado

behind Cripple Creek

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

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

posted
  • place: Arrastra Mountain Wilderness, Arizona

hydrocarbons

Vote Earth Day was spent using only a few grams of hydrocarbons to make hot tea in the morning, and thenceforth, only foot power moving through the desert landscape. watched the stars intently for a couple hours after the thin-sliced crescent moon falls away to the west, the rest of the disk lit with earthshine. watching part with binocs and part with glasses, and part with neither. not much more to say except that zodiacal Light is there as well.

posted
  • place: Sycamore Spring, Arrastra Mountain Wilderness, Arizona

Sycamore Spring

long day with a 12-mile round-trip trek into Sycamore Spring. could not have made the drive in with anything less than a Mercedes Unimog, a Hummer would have been too wide. SUVs don’t have tires with enough bite. so, two-foot-drive it is. better that way. though tiring even when the air temperature is modest. sun was not.

there are cattle being grazed on the BLM land that surrounds the wilderness, and technically they are not supposed to be near the spring or in the wilderness area at all, though I find one gate completely down, and cow shit in some stages of decomposition all to frequently. cattle cause tremendous shifts in the landscape. although it would be hard to tell exactly how or what aside from the obvious disturbances of the soil from the cloven hooves, and the dessicated pies. they re-distribute large quantities of grass and other seeds through the grazing and shitting process.

a frequent thought exercise while making these long walks is to imagine the landscape manifesting as a time-lapse film rewinding back to pre-settlement, and pre-human times. this also purges the frequent song loops that arise while walking — some inane Abba riff will get stuck in head, god knows how (or maybe god places this curse of cultural meme-play on solitary human stragglers). the loop will keep time with the walking pace.

the moment I step off the jeep track and enter the wilderness area beyond the slender fiberglass demarcation signs, up a wash, the energy of the place shifts. walking along another much older jeep trail that has been unused for years one sees the damage as well as the natural regeneration process overtaking the road, destroying it eventually. once the surface is defaced by a vehicle it rapidly erodes with the sparse but often violent rains. sections of the trail now are reduced to a single track or narrow gullies making it easier to bush-whack.

a mile or so down the track is Sycamore Spring, near the head of Peoples Canyon. it is bursting in its place, in this time. at the mouth of a narrowing deep canyon: upstream the dry wash has a trickle of life for at least 200 yards up from the actual spring, a trickle moving across a white bed of welded tuff. shallow pools of tepid and greasy water buzzing with flies, hornets, bees. the spring itself is surrounded by huge sycamores about to leaf out, some substantial cottonwoods, jumbles of downed wood, deep dried leaves, juniper, myrtle, mountain mahogany, segueing within 50 feet on either side back to hard-core desert like all the surrounding space for at least 20 miles to the east and 300 miles to the west, 500 to the south and north at least. saguaro, cholla, teddy bear, barrel, beavertail, mesquite, ocotillo interspersed with short grasses and flowers. the transition is stark and stunning. I am greeted by a pair of Peregrine Falcons who, for a few moments make my presence welcome, but only as an interloper. one sits high in a sycamore screeching occasionally, the other circling on the thermals, they eventually glide down stream to the deeper canyon. there are several deep pools under the trees covered with a yellow skim of pollen, numerous frogs and tadpoles are in the water. this is a wild place.

posted
  • place: Columbia, Missouri

tools to thrive

spend the afternoon at a meeting with a group of about 15 enthusiastic Mizzou students who are interested in fundamental issues around sustainability and social activism. the meeting (Open Sustainability Network Mid-Missouri, under the title Tools to Thrive. hosted by Richard Schulte, one of the founders of the Mid-Missouri group (which is connected to the umbrella Open Sustainability Network). OSN-MM is also the initiator of the Columbia Missouri Exchange Circle. Lonny Grafman, the featured presenter, is a lecturer at Humboldt State University and is the founder of Appropedia Foundation, the self-proclaimed sustainability wiki which provides a public platform for information on sustainable community practices along with pertinent knowledge-sets for implementation. Lonny is also the Executive Editor of International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering (IJSLE). He introduced some of his work in the form of a presentation Democracy Unlimited Humboldt County Rainwater: A Case Study in Open Source Community Action for Sustainability which explored community activism in deployment of sustainable (in this case, domestic rainwater gathering) systems. words: creation of human networks … the search for a deliverable … starts with a sonic ambient exploration a rainstorm … examples of rainwater sequestering … Bechtel in Bolivia … anthropocentric impurities … a lesson in rainwater catchments: free … local infrastructures generate independence / autonomy. Too many details at first. without the principles of appropriate technology use — public perception, policy situation, know-how, resources, initiative, currency in Humboldt … hemp paper, soy inks … Temporary Autonomous Zone break-out groups: creation and organization of more and better public art; bike-powered something; CSPAN (Columbia Sustainability Policy Action Network); local economy (in general); moving from thought to action; facilitating dialogue; sustainable creative activism; expanding the sustainability community; empathy and interconnectedness; rooftop gardens where possible on campus; community networking club celebrations, gardening; organizing / participating in one implementation workshop for a physically appropriate technology setup; less plastic use, healthy local food, teaching sustainability to children … sorry no more detailed notes, I had to leave right after the break-out sessions to meet Nick and Deb to look at houses. I cycle across downtown from campus to the Walgreens where I lock the bike and go in to buy a snack. when I come out I wander across the parking lot looking for Deb’s car. a chubby white woman gets out of a sedan and asks me if I need a ride. she says she normally doesn’t do that, but I looked like I wasn’t a killer and that she’d be happy to help me out. I say no, no thanks, I’m just waiting for friends to pick me up. mid-western courtesy? I’m wearing a black leather biker’s jacket, black jeans, black half-gloves and a baseball cap from Germany, and dark brown sunglasses. who’s she kidding? she must have been one of those mild-mannered mid-western serial killers. just then Deb pulls up. saved! Nick stayed with the kids, so we drive into the countryside to some small towns looking at houses. the area is really depressed, many empty storefronts on Main Street. and this area is relatively affluent compared to much of the rest of the state. it would be very interesting to travel through these areas and document what is happening. sustainability? indeed. things are not sustained here. help is needed.

posted
  • place: en route Great Sand Dunes, Colorado - Bernalillo, New Mexico

another storm

Truck buffeted by winds all night, then the snow starts, this propels dreams into fitful scenarios of drifted doom, a winter spent among the dunes. Unable to proceed, popsicled. Up early, road is wind-cleared, but only locally. Weather threats drone on the radio, and whiting-out proceeds. Pack up and head out. Pass the ranger, give a wave, and don’t even stop at the Center, only a mobile image or two fired off. South and west is where the bad weather is. Wolf Creek Pass is closed. Have to call Richard and Holly to check in from the messy Safeway parking lot in Alamosa, they are completely snow-bound in Durango, and Richard is pretty sick, so, head more south than west. But SR-285 continues to degrade and traffic drops off to nothing. A foot of packed and drifting snow on the road, and more coming every minute. First I was bummed at the pick-up truck in front of me going pretty slow, but after a while, I was happy that there was someone else who was on the road and directly ahead of me to at least get some idea what was happening up there. Plows were not making much progress against the snowfall and for a time I thought that I’d end up in a drift, but it gradually tapered off towards Santa Fe. Hands aching from gripping the wheel.

Shut down driving systems at 1400 a bit north of Albuquerque at the Motel-8 parking lot in Bernalillo, too late to do the run all the way to Prescott today without pushing my throbbing head through several glass, brick, and stone walls. Check in with a couple right jolly Pakistani guys running the front desk. Long hot bath. And lying in somebody else’s bed watching enough cable teevee to get my money’s worth. Free wifi, regroup for the next storm coming through tomorrow morning.

posted
  • place: en route Prescott, Arizona - Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado

Navaho voices

up at 0600, toss the last items in the truck, 0640 departure. head north-by-northeast. one of the five or six route options for traveling between Prescott and Boulder. gas relatively cheap. clear, dry roads. modest traffic. migraine ensues. why? still no answers. face frozen by the icy landscape shape-shifting outside glass cocoon. travel-day migraine.

Navajo voices in my head.

a roadblock for a funeral cortege winding in to a ragged and desolate cemetery near Naschitti. a couple Navajo guys hit me up for change at the gas station in Farmington. tens of F350 Ford pickups streaming back in towards Farmington from the gas fields that have raped the region in the last six years since the Bush regime opened up the area to uncontrolled drilling. more “Navaho voices”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

winter storm

anonymous online life. Plaxo. another online social networking site that makes people look (and feel!) like this… empowered, eh?

winter storm comes, one of those Pacific storms rolling from the west, from California, tracing little rain shadows across the desert. the first wave comes with thunder and dense, dark clouds, air temperature dropping 10 degrees (C). that passes to the east, blackening sky, followed by a double rainbow that plants itself into the scraped earth of the developments on the next range of hills. Granite Mountain is wreathed in scudding shreds of vapor. I can recall the sky four thousand feet lower in the low desert when these storms roll through. but most of all the complete saturation of the air with that wetted-earth smell. everything eight weeks dry. in late summer early fall sunshine.

got overwhelmed by the flood of responses from the class of 1976 regarding the images I finished uploading. maybe people are more nostalgic as times pass. it’s been interesting to hear from folks, though, after all this time. but still nothing solid to comprehend about why memory is so powerful. persistence of recognizing flows. evolutionary, yes. recalling what is dangerous, what is nutritious. but externalized memory, images. as the image-maker, eye hidden behind layers of amorphous silica distortion. seeing. (did I miss high school behind this glass?). am I replaying what was missed?

anyway, a selection of responses, so it goes.

Hi John, I can’t believe you put this all together after all this time. Great job on the photos. What a fabulous collection. It was great fun looking at them. It really took me back. Where do you live now? I still live in Maryland with my husband and son. Our daughter is a senior in college majoring in Biology. I would love to hear from you. Thanks again. God Bless. — Sharon Hill (Warnick)

Hi John, Thanks for the photos. My wife and I always hang out with her friends from high school, here in Los Angeles, and when I hear about how people still hang out with high school friends in Gaithersburg, I always wonder what it would be like to live there and see you all too. My mom and dad still live in the house we lived in when these pictures were taken, but they’re talking about moving now. Getting too old to keep up the house. When they go, my physical connection to Gaithersburg will finally be severed. It’s pictures like yours that keep it all alive for me. Thanks! — Chip Bolcik

john, I really enjoyed the pictures. I am not sure who found my email address, but I was grateful. Think of you often as I have been commuting through Clarksburg, which has gone through changes, as I am sure you have heard. Don’t know if you remember me or not, but wanted to say thanks for the photos. — Debbie Hokanson (Lorenz)

Hi John, Just wanted to thank you for all your hard work getting the photos from high school on your web site. I loved you website and glad you were able to continue with Photography. I’m sure that was time consuming, but certainly worth it. I think That 70’s Show should look at it so they could be more authentic. Hope you make the next reunion. Take care — Sharon Niemann (Hartley)

Absolutely fabulous photos! Had a great time reminiscing. Thanks for sharing! — Karen Harvey (Warnick)

Fantastic job, John! What a fun memory trip for a sunny southwest Florida afternoon. — Susi Martinsen (Sue Merkling)

Dear John… wwwwwwwwwwwooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww YOU HAVE DONE A GREAT JOB!!! I thank u for the time and specially for the devotion… in this wonderful project… — Zulma Urrego

Hey John, Nice job!!! Great memories. Thanks! — John C. Henriksen

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Infinite Jest: Kinds Of Light

Kim proposes a new microsound project, making sound tracks for the experimental films of David F. Wallace’s fictional character James O. Incadenza in the book Infinite Jest. I pick Kinds of Light as it immediately strikes a resonance and subsequently patch together an obsessive piece in 24 hours (4,444 frame splices on a multi-track of a water performance in Pool Creek Canyon (changing the course of history)), shatter-welded with audio from video footage of standing at a confluence in the West Elk Wilderness entranced by the Pele’s hair of water coming from the sun). definite sonic hyper-retinality.

(stereo audio, 7.4 mb)

I missed Wallace during my North Amurikan vacancy of the last 20 years. surprised I hadn’t run across him randomly, though, given the households that I have ramble through on the nomadic way. George knew him and speaks highly of his character. sadly for all of us, another victim of the intensity of be-ing. I plow through Oblivion, and a couple other books that I managed to recall at the library. extremely dense. the first short story I read drove me, half-way through, into a delirious sleep from which I woke ten minutes later, not knowing where I was. jittery, caffeine-fueled, precise jewels. you see the faceting process, the cutting of the entire glittering crystal, a tedium of focus, the high-speed grind with diamond grit, a rocking, polishing movement across the charged wheel. spun tales. fiber glass. each brittle thread opening a bloodless wound which nano-gapes at the whole fuckin’ world, all at once. he would be Brakhage’s cinematographer if Brakhage was blind and able only to see the inside of his eyelids.

“Kinds Of Light” – B.S. Meniscus Films, Ltd. No cast; 16 mm; 3 minutes; color; silent. 4,444 individual frames, each of which photo depicts lights of different source, wavelength, and candle power, each reflected off the same unpolished tin plate and rendered disorienting at normal projection speeds by the hyper-retinal speed at which they pass. CELLULOID, LIMITED METROPOLITAN BOSTON RELEASE, REQUIRES PROJECTION AT .25 NORMAL SPROCKET DRIVE

posted

attenuation and the history of glass

Notes for a talk at the Migrating Realities Conference in Berlin, April 2008.

1 Window Weather: A Nomad’s View of Reality:

The history of the human use of glass, the chemical compound silicon dioxide (SiO2), prescribes a novel point of view on the nature of virtuality, and consequently, the nature of reality. This presentation will sketch a history of that attenuation on individual realities and offer some views on the techno-social system that we are migrating through.

Migrating Reality — commenting on the the term reality, rather than the migrating, though a short comment on the migrating concept — as a movement of point of view … and in that changing point of view, brings internal and external evolution or change. Reality (in juxtaposition to virtuality) … is the aim of this short exposition…
1.1 Introduction:

Change is movement or is movement as a shift of point of view …

We are looking for movements into a change of reality. Does reality change, or do we change?

Migration is perhaps only a change in point of view, as is movement.

What is movement? Cartesian displacement? The body situation changes in terms of gravity a little, and in Light a little, so, what else changes?
1.2 The condition of the world:

uneven distribution of energy and matter :: anisotropy

all is change, change is the movement of energies, is expressed by the movement, the flow of energy and matter from areas of concentration to areas of rarefaction

humans are immersed in a vast field of chaotic flows of energy. Life can be said to be a coherent self-organizing expression of energy driven by the uneven distribution of matter in the universe.
1.3 The human condition:

can change these flows, and DO, to increase material viability (for a time)

gather their life energy, gather energy, and begin to put that energy into transforming the flows that are immediately around them. They attenuate the energies that flow around them
1.4 Window weather — “Gluggar veðrinu”
1.5 What is glass:

SiO2 with a few added chemicals to change the characteristics
1.6 First used as a weapon to increase survival possibilities:
1.7 Optics, photography:

rays of Light attenuated, bent, re-formed, giving us a re-presentation of reality…
1.8 The automobile — enclosed driving:

driving across the desert, it’s hot, the air conditioning is on, the windows are rolled up, the scenery scrolls past the window…
1.9 CRT:

formed glass with rear-projected image via high-voltage radiation and phosphorus.
1.10 Quartz oscillator:

keeps accurate time via piezo-electric characteristics — quartz is keeping your time … you arrived here because a quartz oscillator was used to increase your possibilities of survival …

even atomic (cesium) clocks rely on optics and glass
1.11 The integrated circuit (IC) chip (amorphous silica):

inside the computer
1.12 Computer monitor:

When sitting motionless in front of a flat screen, we are not changing our point of view. We become static, completely unchanging. We cannot change.
1.13 No coincidence: “Windows” OS, but what are we looking at?
1.14 Virtuality, Virtual Reality is simply the condition where we seek to protect our material selves from the world with whatever arrangements of energy and matter that are easily available. Is virtuality changing? Is reality changing? It always is, best to step outside to find out how!
posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

migrating

Last day of the month. Skipping this forum mostly because of the extent of other writing that is happening in the moment. Floods of text-framed energies, directed along one path or another.

Virtuality limits the potential for changing ones point of view. Watching a screen is, literally, a sustained process of maintaining a static point of view. This is in extreme juxtaposition to the process of primary observation of the world as moving through it.

Days are spent writing about amplification and other phenomena that arise from the unequal distribution of energy and matter in the cosmos.

Friday evening I participate in the Migrating Realities conference that Mindaugas has initiated. There will be many familiar faces there: nice. So, a brief presentation in addition to the regular act of active participation:

Window Weather: A Nomad’s View of Reality

The history of the human use of glass, the chemical compound silicon dioxide (SiO2), prescribes a novel point of view on the nature of virtuality, and consequently, the nature of reality. This presentation will sketch a history of that attenuation on individual realities and offer some views on the techno-social system that we are migrating through.

Later in that same evening, I have to remotely present for the conference panel in Savannah, and immediately after that, a live 30 minute visual-sonic set at the opening night of migrating realities. Going to be a stressful day, to be sure.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

ultraintelligence?

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. — Irving Good

aside from inventing a pretty damn smart off switch.

urban renewal is happening in Berlin. on another circuit walk, this time further to the East, I can stand in one spot and see a dozen construction cranes. they are all working on domestic housing units — mostly low, three story maximum, like row houses, condos. filling up vacant lots which were once filled with warehouses. most of the red brick warehouses are gone, and the lots are scraped clear, down to the golden beige sand that underlies the whole city. the top few feet are always full of detritus — porcelain, shattered bricks, glass, and mortar. somewhere I read that in the process of doing random construction in Germany, they also frequently discover WWII munitions accompanied by an occasional detonation and casualties. yikes! I am amazed by the intensity with which the city is still transforming itself.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

after the full moon

This was a night of the full moon, and the eclipse which takes place here in the early morning, well before sunrise, deeply affects the character of sleep. noting the next total lunar eclipse to be seen in North America is on the winter solstice 2010. I’m there!

And, I still haven’t found a vessel to pour milk from for my tea. I bought a small tea thermos a couple weeks ago in Kreutzberg, one that holds four cups or so. I take this to the desk with a small clear glass to drink from. but as I have to have my tea with milk, I need a small vessel of milk. so far, I’ve tried every option available in the flat. everything spills or dribbles! I may have to buy some small milk decanter. maybe a special antique if it leaps across my path. this reminds me of a previous long-term search a decade or more ago for a decent letter-opener. I had a nice hand-carved wooden one from Ghana, but it split, and I was never able to find another which fit my demands — good design, sharp, safe, efficient, nice material.

I just want to drink my tea while writing in concentrated peace and not leave blobs of drying milk on the desk.

anyway, the writing process. uff. this morning I have yet another stupid realization about my own process (doh!). the writing can be a script, a prescription to action, a narrative about possible action. and my narrow thoughts around a substantive text as a necessity for personal viability in the social system is a phantasm. actions based in the ideas that are danced around in the text can generate that viability as well. actions are often promoters of ‘better’ viability. (what is viability anyway? survival, thriving, materially, spiritually?) I always imagined myself as a person of action, but there is at least some tendency to talk and to words. what is done as action is often in the passive mode (observing, recording). actions that grow from that process are of ambient character — that is, they take the form of atmospheric presences, not active stances, positions, opinions. opinion was not accepted as a child. yes, interesting. so now, the last word is important. teaching allows for last words, although I consciously ask, in a classroom, for someone else to make the last word(s).

sotto voce (to brainstorms): A quick thought popped up as I struggle with some texts, sitting here in my sublet flat in east Berlin. As a person, I like to have the last word. What a lousy habit! In the learning situation, I consciously ask for someone, at the end of a class, to have the last word. I am thinking I will incorporate this more formally — to the degree that I pose the question (either to a volunteer or not) “S_, How about if you make a short (one minute) statement that you consider to be the last words for our session?”

When I’ve been doing this very informally, the reactions are quite interesting, with people vying for a last word a bit (people being anxious to leave and such), and then suddenly a consensus forms and the class ends. I think I’ll have to play with that idea/dynamic. I have the feeling it could be a powerful tool to impress (literally) the learning session into the self.

so, one conclusion is that, yes, the creation of a performance/exhibition situation that illustrates the idea (the script) is just as good as writing a text about it. the only difference is the social scale of audience.

of course, the dialogue, the one-to-one, as I define and act upon it, is a powerful (socially?) transformative process. but the relation of that action to social viability is highly … disconnected? I mean, there is the direct connection between the vital process of creating and sustaining a human community around ones-Self, or of embedding ones-Self in an extended community and ones survival, but this definition of survival seems to be somehow oblique to that of larger scale social viability. am I missing something obvious?

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

another TAZ?

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

posted
  • place: Brooklyn, New York

tendencies

(00:09:14, stereo audio, 17.8 mb)

Tending to my own symbolic annihilation. Making agreements with distant others to be there then. When being here now remains contested and thin in execution, and, still, a warm hand-shake and I feel like crying; gracias, gracias por todos, gracias, gracias to the guitar-playing Latino guy (is he my age?), a tenor singing in the L station. His spirit-voice shakes the rusted iron foundations of the city. It quickens autonomous space and heart in the urban subterranean and pushes everyone to the electric forefront of be-ing. The sustained highs transform the state of all things until suddenly I am here now. The I-beams shudder as the train pulls in. My head hangs as I enter the car and slump onto the fiberglass bench. Peak experience, and the inevitable deflation.

posted
  • place: Düsternbrooke, Kiel, Germany

Der geomorphologie von bombardiert Krater

perambulate with snoozing Fritz through the Düsternbrooke Schutzgebiet nearby while Christian & Steffi get ready to go to Zurich for the weekend. acorns (tall oaks from tiny acorns grow!) and chestnuts crunch and pop underfoot. wander past a moldy granite marker with the word Königsbuche (Royal Beech Tree) engraved on it. often when in Germany in larger towns, and in the parks on those towns, I look for the inevitable craters that are sprinkled through the underbrush and between trees. sometimes when the forest floor is clear of brush, it is possible to see rows of craters. filled with water and rotting branches. other places, hills in city parks are merely the wooded remains of debris piles made from clearing destroyed buildings from city streets.

whump whump whump. high-explosives falling in sandy soil. splintering trees into smoking piles of largish toothpicks, sending plumes of shattered glass, brick, ornamental plaster work, and wooden beams into the air and down on the neighbors.

past the tennis club, girls with dogs smiling brightly at me. is it the pram that throws them off? or the combination of my black leather jacket and bright red hoodie sticking out. black and red is not a forgettable color constellation in this country.

posted
  • place: Ukiah, California

OHV

Ready to vacate the camp ground: the omens and portents are not good.

Bbbbbrrrrrrrraaaaaaapapapapapapapapa, brapppapapapapapaaaaaaa.

Nothing like the amplified throb of hydrocarbon explosion to go to sleep by and to wake up by. Camping in a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) OHV (Off-Highway Vehicle) area. The premise is simple, the social system has generated devices, machines, both two-wheeled and four that allow a single driver to mount somewhat like a horse, and to ride at speed on rugged and steep terrain. For entertainment. (Note: three-wheeled machines were banned from production 25 years ago because of the vast toll of injuries and deaths which ensued as a fault of the basic design). The word entertainment is key. It is absolutely true, straddling one of these machines, with hydro-carbon explosions vibrating the body, landscape rushing by a high speed. The body transforms itself into the body of a god (or goddess). Speed and flight, and the power to conquer the land makes one a lesser though very carnal deity. It’s great fun. The wider world is narrowed down to a small slice of the road ahead and some limited peripheral vision that is otherwise masked with the (state-mandated) helmet. The system narrows to the challenge of moving forward along a pathway (state-defined, in this case, with designations for beginner, intermediate, and expert, like a ski area), maintaining forward motion and lateral balance while negotiating the shifts in speed and orientation. Essentially an immersive video-game experience. Back to the virtual. Hearing is both muted in the helmet, but also assaulted by the viciously loud hydrocarbon explosions happening with minimal attenuation between the legs, touch is overwhelmed by the vibrations of hands, holding onto the handlebars (feeling reduced by gloves) and actions reduced to wrist rotations for accelerating, and gripping for braking. Sight, limited by the helmet. Smell coming through a nose filter, and otherwise, smell and taste dominated by the grit of dust that chokes everything. This is circumscribed by my definition of virtual as that which entails an attenuation of sensual input to the body-system.

It’s a holiday weekend, one for remembering the dead, fallen heroes, and the reasons that nation-states exist. The right to bear arms under any circumstances.

A radio blasts into the night as soon as the working folks arrive late on the Friday evening for the three-day weekend. Motors are tuned, beer is drunk, laughter and shouting echoes around the local space. The local space is a mis-en-scene, a tableau. The trees are decorations to be cut for fire, nails inserted into and chopped with hatchets because they are there, extruding from what is taken simply for painted or projected backdrops.

The camp ground is, as darkness falls, a backdrop for yet another kind of entertainment to take place. The BLM has posted a regulations sign-board, but it is the victim of target shooting with large-gauge shot-guns. Most of the regulations are unreadable, peppered with holes leaving letters, words, whole sentences unreadable. No shooting so far this weekend yet, but it’s sure to happen. Our campsite has a mound of big red 12-gauge shotguns shells, spent, under one tree, and several hands full of high-power rifle shells of a variety of calibers scattered around. And every once in a while one sees side-arm shells. Spent ammunition. Broken glass, beer bottle tops. Past remembrance-of-the-dead weekends. Celebrated by shooting into the air, shooting the trees, shooting anything that looks non-human. Most of the time.

The ambient audio mix also contains material from the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas compound.

(stereo audio, 12.4 mb)

There is nothing that does not flow forth from the Dharma Realm, and nothing that does not return to the Dharma Realm.

bbbbbrrrrrrrraaaaaaapapapapapapapapa, brapppapapapapapaaaaaaa.

posted
  • place: Maastricht, Netherlands

Mr. Summers

a tour around to the Netherlands Architectural Institute where Rod is gardening for the Edible City exhibition/installation (which happened to have some of the nice ceramic work by Piet Stockmans). Rod leads a wander through the old town, starting with Hell’s Gate, and on to Heaven for a few minutes where I chat with the head of the local growers cooperative.

the balance of the day is spent listening to, talking about Rod’s work, and the work of others who we know. an artist’s artist, Rod can’t be bothered to take any pause in making work and keep human connections running to worry about creating a web presence. though there is some of his work is on ubuweb, put up by a collaborator, Jesse Glass, as is a good wiki page, such a wealth of material would be an inspiration to a broader public, methinks.

posted
  • place: Huntsham Court, Devon, England

Stonehenge energies

Stonehenge, in a stiff wind. fenced, parking lot closed. the Place looms, well, not looms, but appears between oncoming lorries and a small wood. small and along on a gentle slope that opens up on closer approach. we can’t park, so Jo does a u-turn (aaaaaaa, on the wrong friggin’ side of the road, IMHO!!) and parks on an available pull-out. a full 180-degree rainbow appears over a flock of sheep across the way, almost along the sight line of the standing line stone. there is a hooded figure appearing and disappearing around the base of the main circle, beyond the chain-link fence. I have a sacrifice stone to image there. and some panoramas, but the wind and light rain makes any absorption of the Place not so easy. sunset Light appears, horizontal brilliance cutting from the southwest. clearing the air. there it is. there we be.

I run back to the car, kicking and wiping the beige chalk mud off my boots. getting in , the wrong side always. and fighting the urge to grab the stick-shift even though I don’t have the wheel in front of me. a few missed turns so a larger circled homing-in on Huntsham Court. dark, running the hedgerows. machine-trimmed close and tight. especially with the van that we are driving. high on each side three or four meters. a chill, cold dark. small pullouts for tractors to turn into fields, or leading to stone houses. finally the manor appears. massive stone building with many many windows, stairs, halls, and rooms. three floors, 20-foot ceilings.

we’re not the first to arrive, Jo’s parents and a couple family friends are there trying to stay warm around the enormous fireplace in the Great Hall.

elk and impala heads, jaguars, leopards, bronze owls with glass eyes. swords. closed doors open to reveal more and more incredible rooms. a snookers room, library, sitting room, dining hall set for seventy-five, and on three floors above, the bedrooms and bath, each unique, furnished with a scatter-shot mix of period furniture from stuffed animals to magnificent Tudor oak woodwork and 18th century porcelain bath accoutrement. not to mention the two lions at the front door. wow!

posted
  • place: San Francisco, California

MacWorld

well, what about that? venturing into San Fran for one of those talked-about media events, though I missed Steve Jobs by three days with the hyped unveiling of the iPhone. I did see the worshipful milling about the two glass cases with the two ‘working’ models. hard to engage with the masses of people around. too much time in the boonies! did run into a somewhat familiar face — Steve Bisque of Bisque Software — his father was a prof of mine at CSM, and Steve is a Geophysics grad from CSM, graduating a year after me. his company makes a range of amateur and professional astronomical software. otherwise, well. lotsa toys, things to possibly buy. data security solutions and iPod cases are everywhere. a scattering of Chinese companies have stiff staff manning empty booths, compared to the chaotic and relaxed professional Amurikan consumer and consumee. ID tags are scan-able at every booth with all the data that was required for registration to get into the show. perfect marketing. scan your card to enter in a drawing for a Nano. scan it for propaganda to arrive in the email box later. so it goes. try to buy a discounted replacement battery for my G4 PB, but they are all out. and no microphone is available for my iPod. too old. have to buy a new iPod and then I can get a CD-quality stereo recording mike. sheesh. always something more to buy! never-ending.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

vholoce

another Furtherfield review:

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

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

posted
  • place: en route Steamboat Springs - Echo Park, Colorado

craning neck

as Anthony stated once: re-arriving simultaneity. back in Echo Park. brew some black tea, and wander down to the water’s edge. after craning neck for a long look at Steamship Rock. the river seems high but not near flood stage.

frogs texture the air with the only sounds except for birds. a few people in the small camp ground. maybe a total of 5 people in the whole place. and one just left. hoping that there will be only silence and nature this evening. as my small stove roars while heating water. taking glasses off when NOT looking at this screen. what is it that the glass shields us from? full-tilt apprehension of the world. blurry.

different amphibians make sounds now, others stopping, the texture becomes more varied as I listen more closely, something I can do only when I stop typing and sleep the hard drive. so, I do that now. the battery is low anyway. more “craning neck”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

#48

Self portrait in bed, waking up to celebrate a birthday with a glass of tea. In a silent and empty house. <sigh>

The time of a man’s life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. — Marcus Aurelius

posted
  • place: San Jose, California

seeing hearing feeling

spend the morning with Sally Jane, checking out some of the exhibitions including a personal walk-through of the Animalia project with producers Angela Main and Caroline McCaw (more kiwis!). then on to the ART MUSEUM to see THE SHOW curated by Steve Deitz. some amazing works, leading off with the elegant live-chat-based piece.

lunch with Ken at La Victoria Taqueria, better burritos than Macho Taco which was inexplicably closed at lunch-time.

also happen upon the npr (neighborhood public radio) broadcast studio at the downtown cineplex in an unused ticket booth. was wondering where they were broadcasting from — last night I happened to tune them in at 88.9 on the car radio on the commute back to the ‘burbs. so, met Jon Brumit and

hard to begin and end the day with a rattling vibrating swervy commute that lasts about an hour, door-to-door.

some overviews on the conference:

yadda-yadda-yadda; blah-blah-blah.

so many words, so many moving images, so much sound, talking heads, and spectacle. along with nice personal encounters. the monumental, the hierarchic voices along with the personal, networked, and confidential/private.

San Jose is interesting clash of urban-renewal towers of glass and corrosion-resistant metals: ringed some hard-core barrio Victorian bungalow scene, interlaced with the chronic homeless scattered between the shining spaces and conventioneers.

organized networks are interested in new institutional forms. tactical media has come to a stage of confronting itself. question of scalar transformation, (vs) networked organizations. democracy and networks are antithetical. bunk.

prototypes: sarai, iDC, srishdi school of art and media, indy media, etc

end up going to see a Mike Figgis remix of his film Time Code. a pseudo-press guy is giving away a couple tickets, so I snag one. he explains that he’s not really press, but a writer, and is trying to write a history of media art starting with the worldview of Gertrude Stein. I didn’t quite understand what he was trying to tell me. I suppose he very well might be a better writer that explainer. the film is a disappointment — the subject of the narrative is hermetically sealed in Hollywood and lacks any compelling visual or story elements. Mike is there, verily, and does a live “remix” which consists of rewinding the tape(!) and fading in/out the 4 different screen audio tracks. in form — the four frames which simultaneously inhabit the main screen that were recorded in four single simultaneous takes starting at the same time — there is an extremely interesting potential, especially as the overall resolution of video systems for shooting, recording, editing, and playback are gradually increasing. but the possibilities of the form seem completely wasted by the insipid narrative and visual void. is it a joke maybe?

head back to Livermore on the 87-280-680-84 pilgrimage route. not really liking that violent traverse of the land. though one segment moves across the Calaveras Valley which is still unpopulated and sports the rolling amber hills with huge live oaks scattered at stellar intervals.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

discopie!

Jim sends an invite to a current show at Studio 258 in Denver — brought to you by discopie.com. this is one of my favorite designs that Jim has available at discopie — that you can get it on everything from thongs to buttons to tee-shirts. irreverent, thought provoking, and always with a wicked sense of humor. over our 15+ year friendship, it’s always a nice surprise to see what’s happening in his studio in Denver. and it’s one of Loki’s favorite places to go, ’cause he always walks away with a special little gizmo from the many glass cases filled with jetsam from the High Water Mark of the Amurikan cultcha of the millennium shift. yessiree!

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Partial Description of the World

I don’t normally post long passages of other writers, but Alan (Sondheim) posted this to nettime today: it penetrated the fog of hypo-texts that floods a typical day in front of screen-life.

The power grid provides 60 Hz here at approximately 115-117 volts; this is maintained by dynamos driven by steam or coal or oil or hydro held together in a malleable grid. The grid enters the city, where electricity is parceled out through substations to cables continuously maintained and repaired. Here, the cables are below ground. They drive my Japanese Zaurus PDA which utilizes an entire linux operating system on it. The Zaurus connects to the Internet through a wireless card that most often connects to my Linksys router, which is connected both to the power grid and the DSL modem by a cat cable. The DSL is operated by Verizon with its own grid at least nation-wide and continuously-maintained. The DSL of course connects more or less directly to the Internet, which is dependent upon an enormous number of protocol suites for its operation, the most prominent probably TCP/IP. The addresses of the Internet, through which I reach my goal of NOAA weather radar, are maintained by ICANN and other organizations. These organization are run by any number of people, who employ the Net, fax, telephone, and standard mail, to communicate world-wide. more “Partial Description of the World”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

stellar energy

he stepped outside. immediately the Milky Way is apparent, coalescing on his retina, despite an artifice of Light streaming from unshaded windows. through glass. electric Light, a stream from the beginning. through wires. and wires. crossing immense spaces in the dark landscape. strung from towers that are giant beasts striding, frozen across those spaces. leading to the dams or the power stations. where 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 head with stellar energy. filling a structure made of star dust with the energy from stars…

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Ramson Lomatewama

After a short visit to the Courthouse Square Bluegrass Festival, we wander over to the Smoki Museum to hear a presentation by Ramson Lomatewama, a traditionalist Hopi artist and poet from the Eagle Clan. He referenced Martin Buber’s I and Thou philosophy which pleasantly surprised me, commenting that the Hopi language did not allow for the it of English, making all relation an I/Thou state. With an audience of mostly greyheads, white retirees, he commented on several misconceptions about the Hopi, including a strong critique of Water’s Book of the Hopi, and a short history of Navajo encroachment. He works in a variety of traditional and non-traditional media including stained glass, glass-blowing, cottonwood-root Katsina tithu carving, intaglio printing, and poetry, the following called:

After the Rains

Sandstone cliffs
reflect the red
of the setting sun.

My hoe is caked
with evidence
of my labor.

I see clouds
going to the east.
Dark clouds.

I look to the sky.
There!
A rainbow
is arched above me.

As I walk down
the dusty road
I look up.

Again!
The rainbow
dressed in beauty
walks with me.

There is no need
for us to speak.

Silence
will speak
for us.

It’s a bit of a question, the whole concept of the Smoki Museum — founded in the 1930’s by a passel of white business (fraudster-)men who wanted to dress up like Indians and do fake ‘traditional’ dances: there is a strong streak of paternal exoticism in the premise (even the name Smoki is made-up). God what fuck-wits. Maybe it’s because what the bahannas (whites) have created for themselves isn’t so great, and that the ways of the indian are somehow more romantically sustainable. Add a dose of good old fashioned guilt at the unacknowledged centuries of genocide and lies, and an obsession with Southwest Art, and there you have it. Faugh.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

paint-by-number

Finally got around to reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav, an overview of the New Physics. It’s somewhat dated, but still carries a nice historical narrative with observations on the uncertainty of the whole thing that is being dealt with. Watching a video (produced in Japan), on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Speaking with the Dalai Lama and others. All of whom were dying. Phone call from Nick, catching up. Possible travel plans to Missouri. Also talked to Greg, possible travel to Seattle and BC or Moab. Proposals off to NIFCA for a curators position, and waiting on the doctoral proposal. Reading more than I have in the last years, on average: wider, and deeper, note-taking, resonating with stylistic text forms across academia, science, philosophy, technology, engineering, and esoterica. But unemployed at the same time. Dog-sitting, using the riding-mower to cut some of the lawn; joined the YMCA since the college pool is closed now. Getting used to a different regimen. Lifting in the cybex room. Sore today. Getting my sunglasses replaced finally, ebay for a pair of artcraft round gold frames since they no longer make them. Gotta call Kate at IBM to see about her open source connection. What else? Weeding, and many emails to Europe for a fall tour. And the need to get back out to the desert on the moonless nights.

paint-by-number. Reminds me of summers at Aunt Mary’s house, she loved doing paint-by-number kits. Now she is an decent painter, starting to free-style after retiring to Florida.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

vector attention

fortune cookie:

Be satisfied with what you already own. lucky numbers 16, 18, 21, 25, 29, 45. learn Chinese: Mayor = Shi-zhang

talk to Anthony on the phone, catching up with the poet hissef’, subject launches from Heidegger to Kennan (see following), to Paul Celan through to az’s own individual efforts at poetic production.

The automobile has turned out to be, by virtue of its innate and inalterable qualities, the enemy of community generally. Wherever it advances, neighborliness and the sense of community are generally impaired. — George F. Kennan

from a longer article at Transportation Alternatives. clearly another stab evidencing the general principle that every technological implementation costs something on a scale of alienation. the obverse of destruction of community. I place the destruction back at that granular level: where the particular techno-social implementation splits the Self from the Other by some means. the simplest example is the television, where the attention vector, a metric of the strength of personal connection, is generally directed towards the mediated/socialized flow, and away from, or at least perpendicular to the attention vector of the proximal Other. it would be better to watch the teevee via a macro lens as the media is reflected in the eye of the Other. or, of course, just turn it off and do the face-to-face.

all day today, hypersonic craft rip through the skies, squinting without sunglasses hardly finds any of them, they are distinguished only by their small size, invisibility, odd flight trajectories, and the sonic delay related to speed and altitude, that and the sheer volume. to be under attack from one of them would be fearsome even with a rational understanding of what was going on. it’s not common that they joy-ride around here, but neither is it unknown.

posted
  • place: en route Köln, Germany - London (Clapham), England

loss and gain

after yesterday’s delay, finally arrive in England after a routine flight and no luck locating my lost sunglasses at Heathrow. so, this is the biggest material loss I’ve had on the road in years — actually can’t recall losing something that critical and expensive (impossible) to replace. the frame-style are no longer available to purchase, though perhaps I might be lucky to find an old pair somewhere as I did with my regular glasses. got those for $5 at a flea market in Maine in 1991. nice gold wire-rims. glasses are another one of those items that I have great difficulty in selecting. and actually, I haven’t had a different style since 1980 or so. the temples on my present frames are from glasses that I would wear after surfing, and the salt water in my hair corroded them a bit. the idea of having to get a new pair is daunting. and after getting a pair of reading glasses a couple years ago in Boulder (using the really small round frames that I bought in Paris in 1982), I found that it is brutally expensive to get glass lenses anymore. I don’t like the plastic ones as they are so Light they fly off the face easily, and they just don’t wear well over time (scratching). but I think this is a paradigm similar to the ink-jet printer business — where lenses are made to ‘wear out’ quickly, and you have to replace them on a regular basis. oh well, not facing it yet, but as soon as getting back to Arizona it becomes necessary to deal. it would be impossible to spend any time outdoors this summer there (and in Colorado) without having sunglasses. the UV radiation is exceptionally strong and I get fried eyes even with the old and very dark sunglasses. hmmmm.

Pete is into a finely eclectic range of music (fantastic vinyl collection!) — resonating my own criteria defined simply by the maxim “whatever sounds good.” he gives me a great intro to the whole Northern Soul situation from the 60’s and 70’s with a collection of 25-plus cd’s that, after I do a clean install of OSX on his G4 tower, I proceed to rip the collection for him.

posted
  • place: en route Köln, Germany - London, England

busted engine

In relation with. Impending movement. Gotta leave books behind. Finished the incredibly depressing but enLightening book on the Hopi. I had not been aware of the sad history of the Hopi as a people. A view that encompassed the entire world and all of history. Speaking of floods, that we are in the third world, waiting for the conditions to move to the fourth. A major transition that is predicated on the arrival of the true White Brother. The problem of Navajo encroachment on the ancestral land (this augmented by numerous broken treaties and a lack of enforcement by the bureau of Indian Affairs). Will keep all this in mind when in the region shortly. And will pass some of the stories along to Loki during the summer.

Up at 0525. Breakfast, walk-through of the flat to make sure everything is in good order, walked to the bus to the train to the strassenbahn, to the airport. First item of business is to locate the lost & found to see about my sunglasses. No luck. Checked in, waited for the flight. waited, waited, and waited. Something wrong with one engine. No more flying of British Air. Gave them this chance, and the experience has been dismal. I had even planned to keep one of the keys to Volker’s place just in case, but didn’t at the last moment. Otherwise it would be easy to just pop back to the flat for the night. At least the internet connection would have been free. Here at the hotel it’s €4.50 for 30 minutes. Ridiculous. Will go online though, tomorrow morning or this evening to let folks know in London what happened. And will hit BA with a complaint and request for a refund according to the new EU statute covering delays and so on.

So, sitting in an airport Holiday Inn waiting for another flight tomorrow, rather than getting bused around Germany to another airport to squeeze out today, I just gave up. Fortunately no real schedule except to get to Pete’s and check out some experimental video work this evening. But the whole process and how the ground crew handled things was pretty poor service. Quite a few Americans on this flight who were making connections through Heathrow, so their plans are in more disarray than mine, but either way. Funny, though, how conversations start up, when the suspension of movement breaks down, hearing stories, how complex lives are, how rich and adventurous it is to travel. Many dialogues today with many people.

And, re-reading some travelog entries from Dinosaur, talking about auras. Where energy of a ‘thing’ radiates outwards, cannot be restricted to ‘the thing itself’ because the thing itself is not a thing and it is NOT of itself. The edge is only change, it is not difference in materiality, just present noesis. Or so.

Very hard to recap the dullness that ensues when en route. As I denote that always in notebook and travelog. Back in a travel hotel, the pinnacle of bland survival. On the other hand, I did notice a nice-looking gal in the bar on the way up to the room. Good night.

posted
  • place: Rösrath, Germany

Erlebnis

trawling, ANT (actor-network theory), social network theory, many many theories, some incomplete descriptions. mostly there is a neglect of the energy-transfer. most stay in the realm of abstracted social relation with only oblique reference to the actual embodied dynamic. why facing someone is different than standing at right angles. why eye contact is ‘important.’ and reading a book of Justyna’s about the architectural uses of glass (the airport here a good example of that usage). letting visible Light in is the normal paradigm. resisting natural flows, reducing the total possible bandwidth. from the asymptotic infinitude of blasting flows of the universe to something more manageable. the numerous graphs showing (transmissive) attenuation vs frequency only focus on the visible. a holistic approach would consider the full range of attenuation (what is not allowed to pass). glass is great for a narrow range of Light and some EM radiation off the incredibly narrow range of visible Light, but that’s about it. it stops everything else.

wind (as a formal naming of the flux/movement of air) is a form of energy. sit in a clear glass box in a tropical paradise. and you will die shortly. a glass box is the predicate for scientific (reductionist) experimentation. with a glass (optical) window observing.

again, back to the history of glass. a fragment of an idea that I have often explored with class groups. the history of glass.

They tore down the bus station
there’s chainlink there
no buses stop at all
and I’m walking through Chiyoda-ku
in a typhoon
300
the fine rain horizontal
umbrella everted in the storm’s Pacific breath
tonight red lanterns are battered,

laughing,
in the mechanism. — William Gibson

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

baggage

traveling Lighter than usual. Eagle Creek suitcase: 2x jeans (blue & tan), 7x socks, 7x underwear, swimsuit, swim goggles, knit hat, 4 teeshirts, 3 dress shirts, 3 pullover shirts, scarf, leather gloves, heavy wool gloves, biking half-gloves, umbrella, Birkenstocks, cables (firewire-dv, rca, 2 rca-to-minijack adapters, s-video, composite video, ethernet), three miniDV cam batteries and power adapter, usb mouse, digital cam battery charger & usb adapter, 160 gig ext hard drive, power adapter, cd/dvd case w/ OSX disks and 8 blank dvds, spare 250 mb zip disk, shaving cream, razor, 3x blades, tiger balm, skin cream, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, electric toothbrush and charger, toothpaste, dental floss, brush, hair ties, 4x earplugs, extra glasses frame, 3 cans of almonds, bag of almonds, bag of pistachios, bag of walnuts, bag of cashews, 4 Luna bars, uh, what else? oh, an incredibly compact self-inflating sleeping pad — normally my camping pad, but with my back problems, it is a good solution to soften some beds enough to ensure a decent night’s sleep.

daypack: digital still cam, iPod, adapter, 2x earphones, miniDV cam, boom mike, remote control, spare DV tape, PowerBook & case, power adapter, dv-to-vga adapter, passport, ticket printout, several select rail schedule printouts, 2x Science magazines, Finnish bank deposit forms, glasses prescription, Visa card, Visa Gold card, SIM art union card, Icelandic residency card, bound notebook, eyeshades, 1-liter water bottle, toothbrush, ear-plugs, toothpicks, fine ball-point, cd marker, Euros, Dollars, some GB pounds and Danish Kroner…

wearing: bikers jacket, black boots, black jeans, red pullover, fleece pullover, heavy socks, tee-shirt, money belt, leather cap, earplugs, sunglasses, ear-plugs in pocket, but otherwise nothing else that will set off the metal detectors…

posted
  • place: Tallinn, Estonia

ending

the workshop ends, too short, but seems to move forward. questions are slow in coming, but do arise, from important places. language is a dominant issue, as usual, along with previous educational experiences.

Estonia is starting English education in the first grade now, though, which seems somehow extreme, compared to other places, and for what reasons? to catch up with some perceived lack or slackness? or purely pragmatic synergistics with global capitalism?

a fast tour of the sports shop deep in the mall, but the prices are as high as the US. with throb-annoy EuroClubTrash muzak blaring. outta there. the vibe in the whole place is something of a desperation that shopping will provide an existential answer to the emptiness of ideological allegiance forcefully handed over to the various historical Unions that Estonia is subsumed by.

the guy is laying face down on the variegated green marble floor with a few people standing around. there is a wheel chair next to him, he is speaking, turns his head and looks up, below his face is a pool of blood, and his nose is split. he is a paraplegic, from the looks of his legs which are lying on the floor like inside forgotten pants. his glasses are folded closed in the blood, reminds me of Lennon’s bloody lenses on the window sill. one young guy is calling on a phone, but I can’t tell what’s the progress. a couple waitresses come up with napkins, one holds a hand in front of her face, and turns her head away. no one actually wants to touch him it seems. I am a prisoner of language, thinking that if I spoke the language I would immediately jump in. it’s happened before. the blood is a source of concern, infection, but otherwise, being careful, at least get him turned over, moving his limp legs. he has heavy winter gloves on, to operate the wheelchair. the security guards, all of 18 years old outside the grocery store fingering the ID tag chains around their necks while they stare blankly at passers-by aren’t around now. everybody seems young and confused. drawn from shopping and hanging-out to this microscopic happening.

the indoor mall is a monster in the center of town, just outside the Old Town east gate, other glass and steel monsters are rising all around the neighborhood. surely the Art Academy building will be razed soon. progress. global capitalism rooting out the remaining evil of anything old, authentic, or unmarketable.

posted
  • place: Suomenlinna, Finland

the lost films

have the chance to catch The Lost Films that Stan Brakhage made in 1995. so in-spiring to receive these energies of his life. after he has passed away last spring. an honor to have been taught by him. even when he would sometimes leave the room when screening a film, and forget to turn off his wireless microphone on the way to the drinking fountain or the bathroom, or in an encounter with a colleague in the hallway. when I was doing my MFA back in the late 80’s and again when I was a visiting faculty in the fall of 1997, my office was next door to his 3×6-meter cubby-sized office with a sloping roof on the upstairs hallway where the photography grad students had their darkrooms. it was in that little office where many of his hand-painted films came together, on a glass-topped desk. with the pigments standing ready. how did he conceive, map, from working tediously frame-by-frame with a loupe, the projected brilliance of 24 fps? astonishing crystal clear will-to-see, and to apprehend the world as-it-is, and as we adsorb it through wide-spectrum eyes, corners of eyes, through eyelids, blurred tears, and squinted eyelashes. Light-receivers, life-receivers. and how he conjured humor to arise from chaotic abstraction, magmatic? no, more like a tremoring breeze through new aspen leaves. the coursing of wind mingled with the temporal deflections, resistances of leaf. and the leaf laughs. “it’s the same.” as Lightnin’ Hopkins says, “if you cain’t say it, then … SING boy!”

notes for The Lost Films:

1) A travelogue “nocturne” on the City of London as illuminated by “glaze” finally off the surfaces of Turner’s paintings.

2) A travelog to the north of Finland, shepherded by the midnight sun.

3) A hand-painted work, a “midsummer’s night dream,” still reflective of the previous summer in Finland.

4) A multiply pastel-toned balloon of optical fog triumphing over the barest hints of photographic representation in the lower right-hand corner.

5) A mountain meditation primarily in blue “mountains” of the mind shaped by amorphous dull yellows and faded violets.

6) A hand-painted film, some of the same colors of the previous films moving through sandbars and oceans of thoughtful recollection.

7) This is the eternally ephemeral process of attempts to remember imagery “giving-way”/ being-displaced-by the contemporaneously practical sighting of what confronts any given viewer at every shift of open eyes (or, as in the film, at every shift of camera, optical focus and montage of edit) — the skeins of the Atlantic, the particularities of Boston night Lights, and illuminated points West, ending on a garbage truck in a parking lot by the deserts of New Mexico.

8) A dark “sea chante” of absolute photography.

9) The color negative of “truth” — that is to say it is the whole truth (insofar as hand-painted film might aspire to achieve it) and a counterbalance epiphany to any such “truth” as might be put in quotes.

— Stan Brakhage

Once, I think it was in 1997, Stan and I were talking about his trip to Finland for the retrospective at a small film festival, he was telling me of a peak experience he had while in a rowboat coming from an island in a lake after a sauna. the Light. he broke down and cried from the seeing.

posted
  • place: Suomenlinna, Finland

one text off…

finally finished one text, a project proposal. now back to the thesis proposal, again. cleaned the windows, well, at least one of the two, so the outside comes in better. despite the reconfiguration that the SiO2 applies to the view. ancient amorphisms, resulting from eyes casting through glass at what’s out there. the threat of the chaotic flows of energized nature. dynamism.

vacuumed all the considerable dust in the room and the landing, and the limestone steps from the entrance. fourth from the bottom has an Ordovician cephalopod about 30 cm long replaced with (white) calcite or dolomite in the typical gray matrix. the steps are rounded and spit-shine worn from hobnail boots and whatever else the officers donned for the work of running this vast warren of 18th century militarism. over dinner, a group of us artists-in-residence decided that there were no ghosts here, though, well, at least malevolent ones. probably for the fact that aside for one night of heavy bombardment, (a million pounds of steel fell from British naval vessels offshore — sounds like a lot, but if you consider the size of the guns and the consequent weight of the ordnance, combined with the sheer size of the four-island fortress complex — maybe not to horrific), so, aside from that, no real violence took place here, so it is said. if you ignore the tendency of wife-beating in the region.

posted
  • place: Suomenlinna, Finland

on the way

days alternate: hiding on the island, and going to meet folks. wandering to the ferry through the ice-fog. while meeting Sanna in Café Succés on Korkeavourenkatu, Visa sees me and drops in. on my first visit to Finland, in 1994, and then in early 1995, when I did a gig at Media Lab, I stayed in what was his printing studio, around the corner from the café. to save money on the Nordplus teaching exchange, I had a tea and wienari (a cinnamon and glazed pseudo-spiral of pastry dough with a berry jam center) for breakfast. earl gray. bergamot. it was enough to carry me until the institutional lunch at the university which packed belly with the standard fare. pea soup with ham on Thursdays. all across the country. anyway, it’s my favorite café in Helsinki, they have the largest and best wienari in town, made on the premises fresh daily. there is a constant level of coming and going, intimate meetings, where old lovers can have tea and conversation that drifts through all the subjects that once were whispered with entwined and humid breath in nights of late spring, no longer dark in these latitudes. tulips on the table are chosen with a color to match the only dressy shirt available, and time is mapped in eyes and souls. nothing changed, and only the future is left. the past is past. dialogue after dialogue. one, another, another, yet another. life spent in this vocal dance. and occasionally in the Lighter dance of embodied soul, where corporeal centers of gravity press close and don’t need calculus to predict a potent trajectory.

if only. on the edge of the seat, looking onto the eyes. averting when the intensity of that looking is too much. trying to see heart behind glassy lens. but, after awhile, nothing to do but be. effort for this is neither rewarded nor punished, only just tolerated. better to stay in the moment, forget past and future. be an oracle for the self. and when wandering back slowly to the island, Lightly entwined for warmth, words slowly pressed from the atmosphere, silence filled with iced breath. first some tea to warm hands, then rearranging the furniture, pushing beds together.

the issue is, on this residency, what exactly to do? or not to do?? some things are done already.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

yak yak yak

hard work? hardly working? surely talking to people a lot. too much? pot of boiling water. on the stove. boils over the flame. morning tea coming sometime soon. and what else? closing times here, there, openings. and it all goes on. slipping into tall and brilliant skies of another blue than I can say. long time away. so that the words for it don’t come when the eye gathers up the wholeness. beyond the clouds, at the rim of the world. where it meets heaven. and all symbol systems do not speak of the wholeness, they speak of what the wholeness means to the human. standing on ground looking through melted sands and pieces of forgotten dreams.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

triple glaze

well, and as this might very well be the last few entries into this document for … ever … why not leave something decent? end of a long school day, day starting with the raucous scatter of birds through the window. single glazing, unlike Finnish triple glazing. Finnish windows. did I ever talk about that?

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

Sólveig’s

Forgot to write anything, lost in the hangover haze from one of those dinner parties. Sólveig and Artu invited me over with some other artists from Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland for a loooong Russian dinner which turned out fabulous. Even though all the onions that were diced were NOT eaten. Everything else, including the vodka, was consumed, as per video evidence below … a walk home at 0430 was nice, though, with the bright morning Light already in full tilt. I chant I’m on a’nother fuckin’ planet, I’m on a’nother fuckin’ planet, I’m on a’nother fuckin’ planet, I’m on a’nother fuckin’ planet as I pass by Töölönlahti, the Taidehalli and Eduskuntatalo (Parliament House) on the way home, also evidenced late in that video. Only problem, I paid for the walk the next two days. I had forgotten to put the small foot-pad in my left boot. Seems that for my spine to be in equilibrium, the left heel must ride a couple millimeters higher than the right. Symmetries of nature do not apply to the left/right sliced-and-mirrored human body. The generated image of meat-half and reflected-half forms two subtle monsters. In my case, left side of body (right brain) is variously halt and lame. While the right side (left brain) dominates. Eyesight also anti-symmetric where right eye is far-sighted, left eye, near. One optometrist tells me, hey, this is a good thing because you will always be able to see something without glasses. Okay, I think it was the same optometrist who gave the wrong prescription and made the left eye get worse over a 6-month period way back in the 1980s. Idiot. But eyes stay with the same strength for a decade now. No changes. Same glasses. The frames bear the corroded temples from Pacific salt water, sunglasses worn after surfing. Now about that Swedish gal in the hallway, it was pretty crowded in the closet.