Instead
of getting lost and bewildered in separate identity of things,
we must view their integral
interrelationships and significance.
If we consider,
the construction of a television
set and its astounding ability
of processing the endless set of images
and their interplay toward reproduction
of scenes and events and occurrences;
of transmission and reception
of an ad-hoc arbitrary signal,
of weaving the waves into picture after picture. more “manifestations of thought”
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.
back to connecting the dots
Mulling over the way to go — how to carve a trajectory through the knowledge space? — perennial (no, daily!) question. Confronting the students with a more random array of inputs (texts, discussion-lectures, other material) forces a certain kind of sense-making. Or does it merely confuse? In conversation with one colleague who is involved in teaching rhetorics, a friend of EJ’s who is now a voting member of the AAUP’s Committee A* (!), it seemed clear that the tools necessary for sense-making are gradually slipping out of vogue. They are perhaps simply too hard to acquire within the framework of the corporate education schema. This leaves learners without some crucial tools for dealing with (questioning) the nature of reality. The “critical thinking” rubric seems hollowed-out as a singular approach without more basic sensory (‘sensual’ as David Abrams puts it) awareness. This goes back to Howard Rheingold’s “Net Smarts” book which explores mindfulness as one profound and crucial way to approach aspects of reality and, specifically, the aristocracy of technology that we now abide within. A holistic approach that considers our embodied be-ing and it’s relation to the rest of reality as completely connected at all levels seems to provide such an entry point. Assuming connectedness and sussing out how — rather than invoking certain aspects of the scientific method that often assumes disconnectedness with the need to prove any co-relation — instead sussing out the nature of connected relation.
* elsewhere I’ll have to get into the contentious issues surrounding Committee A (sounds like something out of Pravda): tenure being a primary one!
the social
So much of be-ing is a convergence (there was no divergence!) of the social and the natural — as if these two categories are indeed mutually exclusive and reciprocal reductions of the world. They aren’t, they can’t be. In a holistic worldview, it is clear that the social is a development of the human species which is a natural extension of life on the planet.
conversation
a long conversation with Anthony this evening. always stimulating coverage of the non-typical meta-structures of social and individual existence.
the thought comes up, in teaching — most recently the “Multi-platform Story-telling” course that I was involved with this past semester at La Trobe — how seldom the holistic social meta-structure of the grouping of students (and teachers!) is considered in the facilitation of a learning trajectory. this includes the cumulative totality of all relations (power and otherwise!) that occur within the grouping. I call this space the continuum-of-relation and define it as the total accumulated network of relations, expressed as activated exchanges of energy, as Dialogues, that have occurred, are occurring, and will occur between members of the species. Based on the assumption that we are in a holistic and continuous universe, it is possible to extend the definition to include the set of energy relations that humans have with the detailed and greater cosmos around them, and indeed, this is an important aspect to consider, but it is easier to limit the scope to a specific subset comprising relations between all humans. There are infinite sub-sets of relation that may be delineated, one set being those which arise in the process of learning facilitation. much attention is paid to syllabi, curricula, classroom technologies, and wide-scaled social ‘relevance’ of education systems while very little is paid to the immediate and long-term embodied needs for a recognition of presence of all the humans involved in the actual learning process. and especially the needs for deep human encounter and connection. is it such that this university, as with most others, is merely reflecting a wider scale of civil social decay when those crucial relations and their attendant qualities are simply ignored in the stead of assessment protocols, schedules, cash-for-services, and the general corporatization of education. more “conversation”
workshop – Day 9 – eNZed
Workshop day begins: first the waka time on the river. Morning cycle down the river to the Putiki boat ramp, get there a little early, and feel the nerves as to what is possible with the workshop. There have been numerous anticipatory conversations in the last days about what I will be doing. I take a small paper with thought-notes and put it in my life-jacket pocket.
I am fighting with the impression that there is a superfluity of input for the participants — some have not been on a river or so. My dilemma becomes a question of when to jump in and alter the flow of events and protocols which accompany the waka and the enveloping and powerful Maori cultural scenario. It makes no sense to do anything other than participate. Where full participation is a position, an approach to an eventuality of contingent life-flow. I am observing the processes and vibes that are coalescing, seeing if there is a auspicious moment to intervene, but I see none. Back to participating. Enjoying it all. The newness, but also the familiarity and comfort which the Maori protocol applies to that (community-facing) unknown, and The River. more “workshop – Day 9 – eNZed”
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”
etc…
The holistic energy-based model is necessary for sense, harmony, and accuracy (in accordance with observed phenomena). However, the entire point is to frame a (creative) praxis that has a broader awareness of the complex inter-relations of things (beyond things, well into flows!). This suggests a constant critique of the status quo, a presumption that life is not proceeding with enough creativity or enough vis viva. When is enough enough? (Too much is never enough!). But are these volumetric quantities anyway? Spatial, Cartesian? Nah! Creativity is a flow, non-localized (it affects all): it is characterized by temporary states, transitory awareness, evolutionary phase changes. It is continuous and indeterminate, available always in the interstitial actions which lie outside the control of the social system.
(How to Sit) Zazen
It’s a good example of the affect of mediation on socially-generated practices of any sort [this came into mind when I saw a poster advertising a IEEE conference here in Sydney. The posted contained all the recognized and standardized functions of conferences anywhere on any subject. The cocktail evening cruises on the ________ (fill in the blank) river/harbor/lake. The hospitality suites in the _________ (fill in the blank) hotel. The keynotes by famous personages. The plenaries, the break-outs, the posters, workshops, and seminars. yadda, yadda. Don’t people get tired of this endless repetition of heavily coded social protocols?]
The following was downloaded from the UM (University of Minnesota) original Gopher online text retrieval system sometime in the winter of 1991-92. I think it’s the first document (extant) that I downloaded via that new networked document system — the direct precursor of the WWW. Coming around in a very long, very wide circle, from the roots of the digital coming-to-being in the last millennium, breathe deeply:
1. Sit on the forward third of a chair or cushion.
more “(How to Sit) Zazen”
arrival and meditation
Have an incredibly erotic dream with Jennifer D., back from the Culture Capitals 2000 project in Prague. Will have to email her. Otherwise watery squint-eyed perusal of the rotating stellar field in ma’ face.
This morning, a raptor circles a hundred meters away with its mate hidden in the trees along Pool Creek, making a creeeewing sound. It’s the same noise it made when I wandered over to the creek earlier in the morning. All the birds are noisy—it makes a multi-dimensional flow which lies on the ear with pleasing insistence. No need to move the head, as the sources are in motion and occasionally in sight.
more “arrival and meditation”
quick note on virtuality
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.)
The uncontrolled gesture: go to your edge
Starting with the immediate body as a field-of-action to release control (versus the control-at-a-distance regime we are immersed within now):
Bushwhacking is a method to relinquish control of the trajectory of the body. By exposing the body to the unknown, one has to respond in real time, in the present. This present invites the presence of be-here-now and within that state of be-ing, the embodied self yields to the edge that divides the controlled from un-controlled. Precisely at that edge is the locus of active transformation and change. Making the next step into the unknown is, literally, an act of trust in the body, in a belief that entering the unknown will present possibility. Whether or not this possibility is merely the chance of the continuance of the species (in a biological framework), the projection of life into the not-now, the future, or whether it is an operative pre-condition for a transcendent state I cannot at this moment comment on. Somehow, this is a question that each individuated being self-wise has to make in each of those moments.
more “The uncontrolled gesture: go to your edge”
dipping into Ellul
Morning reading, sparking off Jacques Ellul’s classic, The Technological Society, where he attempts the first comprehensive definition and discussion of technology as something that pervades and underlies social formation(s). He also discusses a distinct relationship between the machine and technology, where the machine is the most important and obvious aspect of technology; where mechanization “transforms everything it touches into a machine;” but where technology is a cumulative way (perhaps expression?) of integration of the machinic into the social fabric, it is represented by a continuous re-formation of the (human) life-form(s) to the techno-social system. Without this impelling force, humans, as simply another evolutionary life-form expression, would not have arrived at where they are in this moment.
more “dipping into Ellul”
MEP and other things
Presuming the Terran system is a (fully) self-regulating system, then the hypothesis would have to include the entire evolutionary process which produced human beings among other biota under the particular macroscopic and microscopic availing conditions. Self-regulation would then suggest that the system will solve the current problems of human over-population and resource spoilage as it solves all other oscillations of what is a system in thermodynamic disequilibrium. Biospheric self-organization (among a holistic range of other mechanisms that we likely have no clue about in the moment), will do it’s thing. Despite, in spite of, and at the effect of what a specific biotic evolutionary line is doing. There is plenty of data showing wide-scale fluctuations in, for example, atmospheric components related to changing biotic fluxes.
(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”
fragmentation
… this false reification of the self is basic to the planetary ecological crisis in which we find ourselves. We have imagined that we are a unit off survival and we have to see to our own survival, and we imagine that the unit of survival is the separate individual or a separate species, whereas in reality through the history of evolution, it is the individual plus the environment, the species plus the environment, for they are essentially symbiotic. — Gregory Bateson
This is exactly what Bohm is talking about when he frames the absolute disaster that a fragmented and materialist worldview has delivered us to (and to us!). And how a holistic and symbiotic view is the only way out of the crisis.
Wholeness and the Implicate Order
Finally getting down to some David Bohm texts that I’ve been wanting to absorb for years but never had the time or access. I had a short correspondence with his widow some years back for the purpose of responding to the Dialogue essay and subsequently hosting it on the neoscenes third-party texts area. After Buber, Bohm was the first to show up as a source on my dialogue radar, an influential one at that, when a contemporary concept of dialogue-praxis is examined. Bohm has a powerful and holistic approach, literally, grounded in a worldview based on his interpretation of Quantum, the development of which he was an integral player. I am more than encouraged — inspired would be the correct word — by his approach, rigor, and mapping of a powerful foundational approach to human relation both with the cosmos and with each Other.
Also crucial to his view is the problematic nature of language as it exists (English, specifically), suggesting that the (tyranny) of subject-verb-object be replaced with a structure that emphasizes the verb — emphasizing action over thing (reflecting back to ancient Hebrew as did David Abram in The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World where the written language included only the consonants, and vowels—which necessarily need expiration, a projection of the spirit to say—were introduced by the spoken reader, infusing the word with the life-spirit of breath.
The shifting of English that Bohm suggests illustrates how language informs/forms ones worldview as Benjamin Whorf promoted with his concept of linguistic relativity (which has always seemed obvious to me, an awareness perhaps brought about through the process of photographic abstraction of the world).
Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Bohm, David, Routledge, London, 2002
The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world. — Wilhelm von Humboldt
Then the question of how to deal with all these books at once? Where to read them, how to take notes, how much to read in any one at a time, and such. Reading in the evening before sleeping isn’t very good, although restful. Mid-afternoon is optimal, but carving out several hours from the daily to-do grind makes that difficult. Having a space in the CMAI office is very helpful now, as there are more comfortable chairs. The collective grad offices are too noisy and busy. Dislocating to Bronte or a cafe elsewhere is possible, but not time-effective if only for reading. Ach!, the questions of methodology …
Energy and Society
Excellent resource which will allow me to trace both forwards and backwards in time on this particular worldview which, although the definition of energy is strictly based on contemporary physics and thermodynamics (of that time), it provides a valid and detailed approach to the issue.
(Not to mention that the copy I got from Newcastle University was “donated by the Newcastle District Committee of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.” Would for the survival of humanity that engineers take in the consequences of thermodynamics at all scales!)
Cottrell maps out in some detail the inter-relationships of technological (energy-usage) and the consequent/subsequent social change/evolution that occurs.
more “Energy and Society”
thesis proposal :: Background
Background for Research
While individual human presence in this world has fundamental repercussions on be-ing, it is the ever-present and synergistic exchange between humans — forming what I call a “continuum of relation” — that governs much of life. This energetic field of human relation is sometimes fraught with difficulties and complications in spite of the rich and necessary dynamic it brings to life. Technology, as a ubiquitous factor in mediating human relation, often dominates while presented as providing the only opportunity for mediated connection and interaction between humans.
Presence, as apprehended by the Other, circumscribes a range of sensory inputs that require energy (from the Self) to stimulate and drive. The efficacy and sustainability of human connection builds on the very real and tangible transmissions and receptions of energy between the Self and the Other. An interconnected plurality of dialectic human relation may be described as a network. These networks, made up of a web of Self-Other connections form the base fabric of the continuum of relation. Technology appears in these networks as the mediating pathway that is the carrier of energy from node to node, person to person. Technological systems also appear to apply absolute restraints on and attenuation of the idiosyncratic flows inherent in that continuum of relation. The discrete objects that populate the (technological) landscape of the continuum of relation and that modulate the character of communications are literally artifacts of a materialist point of view. A primary assumption in my research is that a materialist or mechanistic view of the world no longer suffices to adequately circumscribe the phenomena occurring within the continuum of relation. more “thesis proposal :: Background”
Weiner
back to the thesis application preparation. the following is, in a way, a Utopian case that forgets the holistic and distributed system that communication and its impulses arises in:
We have thus established the basis in man for the simplest element in his communication: namely, the communication of man with man by the immediate use of language, when two men are face to face with one another… this capacity is not intrinsically restricted to the immediate presence of the individual, for we have many means to carry this tool of communication to the ends of the earth. — Norbert Weiner
while the premise is intrinsically true, Weiner neglects (for example) the reality of the infrastructure assembly process to undertake the real movement of language across those vast distances. those infrastructures do not materialize themselves. they are specific and real social constructs. assemblages that social systems expend liberally on to assemble and maintain: they are the fabric of the social system — the techno-social system. therefore, while the mediation of abstracted language can be shuffled around, the human participating in the system of shuffling does, somehow use some real energy in order to participate. while this energy, considered on a limited scale may seem minor or non-existent — i.e., someone hands me a phone to make a trans-continental call, which I undertake with an expenditure of a marginal amount of embodied energy — someone, somewhere, as part of the larger social system, collected vast amounts of energy from the distributed individuals that make up the system and assembled the entire electrical/physical infrastructure of the telecom system.
The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks
A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor’s note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 that set life on another trajectory.]
1.0 Statement of Problem
1.1 Introductory note
Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. more “The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks”
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
ultimate art
These past two days are spent writing at Volker’s place, and a few expeditions out. Volker is in the midst of preparing two exhibitions and one performance all coming up in the next two weeks, so he is rather busy.
DIE WAHRHEIT ALLES LÜGE Irgendwas + klein. Auftritt hoffentl. V. Hamann m. Unterstützg. v. HmHmHm + Sittich-Trill, u.U. zu danken e. Freire. 19.April 20.00 bis irgenw. im Mai, Term. auch n.V. Ultimate Akademie, Mozartstr. 60, 50674 Köln, Fon+Fax 0221-238585
Last night we visited with the photographic artist, Michael Wittassek, who just closed an exhibition at the Ultimate Akademie Köln*. I was impressed with his work, his working method, and his ideas. His approach to photography is holistic and novel, and at the same time,the work exhibits a rare and penetrating sense of humor. His photographic installations are tragic, tactile, and penetrating.
*I’ll be doing a performance/lecture at the Ultimate Akademie Köln in late May on my way back to London from the North. The Akademie was started by Fluxus pioneer Al Hansen who died last year.