posted
  • place: Arvada, Colorado

greets — more on energy…

responding to Brian Holmes on the iDC list:

> Universities are indeed overblown–just like post offices, trade unions, governments, etc.

With H. T. Odum’s conceptual support, I would opine that these conditions can only arise in a system which has a glut of energy (at all levels of structure) which is illustrated (at one level) by the increase of obesity in the oil-glutted ‘developed’ world. There is one thing that creates wealth and that is access to energy to maintain the ordered structure of a complex social system or to maintain a position towards the top of a social hierarchy. And while cash is convertible to energy when the social system issuing the abstracted fiscal instrument holds the trust of its participants, when the s**t comes down, cash doesn’t help, only access to power/energy in supra-concentrated units (weapons!) will save.

Most of us are in such positions or situations, relatively, and are communicating here through a techo-social system which is absolutely dependent on that energy glut for its coherent order and in a situation when the energy glut tightens to an energy lack, you can be sure that we all will be sliding down, relatively, to a lesser state. Personally I believe that the current ‘economic’ situation happening is because we have reached a point where the hydrocarbon-fired social order is coming to an end. (This partly caused in the West by the rise of China’s demand for hydrocarbons, but globally by the condition of use equaling production, and new reserves being less than any predicted future use.)

No techno-social system is free from this thermodynamic reality, ever, and furthermore, energy availability is the foundation upon which all ideological, political, economic, security, and other realities play out.

And, as I was going to say in response to Brian’s recent reply — To be sure, collapse, contraction, stability, or other characteristics of (social, ‘natural,’ cosmological, all!) structures are primarily determined by their access to usable energy input, so it is, again, important to understand this first, and that the ‘economic’ is merely an abstracted social construct which, at root, may be quite disconnected from the energy reality of a system. The fiscal obscures the actuality, and this can lead to incredible errors in judgment by entire social systems as well as individuals.

Thinking in the moment, it occurs to me that an explanation of the mortgage ‘crisis’ in the US could be that, given the conversion rate between the embodied life-energy/life-time of an individual (home buyer) and their relative economic ‘power’ there was a substantial gap. Another words, an individual could not, given their own energy sources, bring together the energy to create a house of, say, 4000 ft2 (400 m2). In an system where there is a glut of energy, that excess of energy can plug the gaps in an individuals energy lack, and allow them to exceed what would be their normal status without the glut. This same argument would hold for all scales — where, say, the US military is in the exact same situation. W/o the oil glut there simply would be no US military (of the magnitude that it is)! The gap between a ‘normal’ military appendage and an obscenely bloated and aggressive one is excess energy… (in this case, the energy availability has a parallel mapping: testosterone::individual aggressivity — oil::techno-social aggressivity).

(speaking as a former explorationist for a major US oil company … )

(By oil glut, I mean the entire history of hydrocarbon usage which concentrated in (created!) the ‘developed’ world during the last 200 years)

Watching the Tao is better than watching the Dow!

posted

stories from stricture

from Kevin Hamilton on the iDC list:

Thanks for sharing this tantalizing bit from your project Chris, I’m sure eager to see more of the outcomes. You rightfully remind us that framing the discussion in terms of ideologies or worldviews, even economically-influenced ones, leaves out the fact that there are bodies moving around (or not moving), generating these stories.

Much of the flow of human resources (beings) as a primary energy source, was facilitated (forced along) by the formative pathways of the Military-Industrial complex (Interstate highway system, for example, the car culture in general, etc, ad nauseum). It was the prescribed protocollary forces of that M-I system that facilitated (required!) mobility of the bodies as a dispensable resource. And that enforced mobility had a cost — the essential alienation of the displaced Self. This displaced Self would have been a major social problem in regards to social stability, but that problem was muted by universal consumerism (chain retailing) which imposed a sameness on most major (Cartesian) points under the domain of the M-I complex. The pathways remain the same, but the strictness of their applied impression on each individual gives rise to a plethora of different stories: variations on a theme.

These energy flows are not arbitrary, but are complex interactions between evolutionary expressions of life on the planet (humans as perhaps a non-unique expression of that life, in principle) and how techno-social systems re-form and impress pathways on those energies…

posted
  • place: Millers Point, NSW, AU

netart 2009 – VisitorsStudio

The following quick essay was for the last and final edition of the annual netarts awards from the Machida Museum in Tokyo:

Grand Prize for this year, the online platform VisitorsStudio, is not a complete newcomer to the netart scene — it’s been running as a live visual-sonic collaboratory for a few years now. As a playground, it offers many degrees of freedom within what appears at first to be a very restrictive environment. But, isn’t it true that all play-places have limits? Your mother would never let you go off just anywhere and play. Your mother would certainly approve of VisitorsStudio. The limits of VisitorsStudio lie primarily in the intriguing area of file sizes (more on that shortly). The interface is intuitive and straight forward, and does not entail a steep learning curve: anyone can create mesmerizing works in no time.

The most obvious elements in digital ‘mash-up’ play are the text, the image (still and moving), and the sound. Participants in VisitorsStudio may gather these elements themselves and using a rich set of live controls make compelling live mixes. There is an existing database of files to work with, or, you can prepare your own media library to upload and play with. This is where each sound, image, or video file is limited to a 200kb maximum size — you will be surprised at what can be done — the result is absolute proof that great things come in small packages.

VisitorsStudio is available for special performances and makes an ideal platform for educators in all settings who wish to stimulate imaginations with real interactive digital art — it’s not simulated and it’s not eye-candy. As a collaborative tool, it does not aggressively take the foreground in the process, but rather works as a solid and supportive background element for seamless play.

Of course, the best way to enjoy a jam session is with a heavy-duty sound system and a 72-inch plasma screen or a video projector. You will be the resident visual-sonic artist. But intimate small-screen solo play is also very satisfying. The best feature is the possibility for live remote partners and audience. Invite your friends half-way around the world to join you in a jam session!

Technically, VisitorsStudio needs only an internet connection and a browser running the latest version of the Flash plugin. And, hey, if we ask, maybe they will port a Wii controller to VisitorsStudio! Wouldn’t that be fun? Let’s play!

One of the Honorable Mentions for the 2009 netart award is SiTO’s gridcosm project which, if there ever was a primordial interactive play-place online, this is it. Gridcosm was initiated by Ed Stasny way back in 1997 as an outgrowth of SiTO’s live online image mash-up collaborations. That’s in the Precambrian era of internet time! It even has its own Wikipedia entry! But gridcosm clearly tapped into something fundamental — with a fresh and accessible interface design; a solid back-end code; and exuding a rare social sensibility of precisely what it means to collaborate online — there are hundreds of contributors. A dozen years later, the collaborative space is continuously full with a vibrant and evolving palette of personalities and plenty evidence of creative juice spilling out onto the screen. The acronym SiTO originally came from OTIS (Operational Term is Stimulate) which was the motto of the nascent online collective collaboratory back in 1994 or so. So, kudos to gridcosm for sheer staying power and what looks to be a lively future. How many layers does an artwork need to have for it to be classified as cosmologically significant? Visit gridcosm and discover the answer to this profound question! It’s an open project for anyone to jump into — as are all the SiTO collaborative projects — so, check it out!

John Hopkins, Sydney, Australia, 15.Nov.2009

posted

code and money

Michael Bauwens on the iDC list:

I think the important insight that travels from free software to money is this. Power lies in the code and in the invisible structures that enable or dis-enable actions and relationships, what Alexander Galloway calls ‘protocolary power.’ The great insight of the current age is that money has a code as well. But just as we do not have the power to change the code of microsoft, we do not have (yet) the power to change to code of political money, so the alternative world-constructing route is to peer produce our own, differently coded money.

sotto voce: This brings up the thought that code and money are both likewise abstracted representations of Power that have to be actualized through two processes: 1) a participatory social grouping who choose to believe (have faith) in the power of the abstraction to cause material change in their lived existence and 2) a means for the abstracted instrument to interface with a real (material) regime of existence. Power, in the end has to be or has to have available a way to apply itself to life, to an individual life, to be delivered (as that change).

For example, code describes what a device can or should do in theory. It needs the device to make that actually happen. Code without the physical transmission of power (kilo-calories, joules, megawatts, whatever) is a complete abstraction and is of no consequence. The machine or interface that actualizes the code is embedded in a specific field of power flows — i.e., the electrical generation and delivery system, manufacturing systems that depend on transportation networks which depend on hydrocarbon fuel power, etc. This larger techno-social infrastructure that is essentially a field of directed energy flows depends on a whole host of humans believing that the code will ultimately improve their lives on earth. If there arises a doubt that the code will do this, the whole system starts to unravel. If it becomes clear that the code is failing to bring power to the user, they will stop putting their life-energy into propping up that techno-social protocol and the infrastructure it is embedded within.

The code of religious teaching, the code of social behavior, the code of the machine, and the code of economic instrument all have the characteristic that they are completely dependent on being actualized this way, else they have NO power. In the end, the code is merely a socially prescribed pathway along which real energy is forced to flow.

Faith in code(d abstraction) produces a shared or centralized capital of potential power, but there always needs to be a tangible means for translation from code to be-ing. The body is the primary means for code to become lived action or the source of applied and energetic change. That would be the minimum device necessary, all other devices are simply amplifications of the body-as-energy source.

With the demonstration of faith as an applied and directed energy flow through a code comes the often terrifying expression of directed social power. On the other hand, when the individual participant in a social system seeks and finds/makes expression not according to The Code, the dominant collective immediately loses a fraction of its ability to direct energy as it wills.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

iDC dregs

iDC list gets annoying and rewarding at the same time. but what of life spent on the keyboard? the topic is teaching… and the transition of the teacher into the link jockey.

sotto voce: While the offerings of IP_based networks seem unlimited, and in rhetoric, the superlative of unlimited is often applied, I think it is important to keep firmly in mind that it is not a space of unlimited knowledge nor is it a space of neutral knowledge. And, also, in this time, it is not a space of embodied experience aside from eyes absorbing statically-framed EM radiation, ears hearing sounds disconnected from their source, and fingers twitching across a very limited place. Not to mention underlying ideologies which accompany each form of mediated connection (largely invisible but very much real) — among others, that of consumption (extractive resources, electricity, and thus, the globe-spanning world that we exert irresponsible dominion over). In this regard, the (limited)vastness of that knowledge-space seems a bit tainted and out-of-touch perhaps. Expensive and consumptive. Exclusive, reductive, and reified. A teacher is a catalyst, and is one who, simply by being an Other we encounter in life, presents us with the unknown. If we trust that Other, a world opens up that was previously unknown, and (if) we (trust enough to) apprehend and engage it, it changes us, we learn. This unknown world is sourced in the entire comprehensible universe, and is available through that Other. These encounters may take place anywhere, anytime, and can be had ‘for free.’ We need only ‘pay’ the Other with our attention, our life-time, and life-energy. It seems that in our formal techno-social educational systems, these potential encounters with the Other are (being) replaced by more and more socially-standardized systems-of-relation (protocols, curricula, government mandates, abstracted monetary instruments) which seem ever more intrusive to and even suppressive of potential open encounters. This limits the creative potential of the outcome. The cumulative effect of this social hyper-formalization-of-encounter — because learning occurs precisely at the edge of knowing, not within the known — is that we look elsewhere for the dynamic of coming-to-be (learning) that keeps us alive and growing. To me this is the ultimate source of the loss of vitality that affects the Education World, a vitality that ultimately does not rest on technological mediation but on human encounter. Yes, human encounter is always mediated by the vast range of social protocols and tools, and learning encounters may happen within highly mediated (‘virtual’) spaces, but when we allow those encounters to slide continuously into more and more mediated spaces, the life-time available for less mediated human encounter shrinks. I think that this represents a wide loss to learning, education, community, and creative potential as it moves to extremes and forgets what it is predicated upon — the originary encounter between the Self and the Other.

posted

thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts

Concerning Particular Methodologies

Dialogues, Networks, and Collaboration — Much of my creative practice, research, and indeed, presence is built on the activation of robust and sustained dialogues with a wide range of Others both remote and local. These dialogues form a network. The most powerful situation I can imagine for creative research and production is an open human network. I am keen to engage on the ground with the Australian, Sydney-based, and UTS creative community. I am familiar with the milieu, having been in Sydney for six weeks in 2006 as a visiting artist at COFA, and I very much look forward to being there again. I have an extensive personal/professional network of Antipodal creatives which dates back to the early 1990s that I will be pleased to activate on a more face-to-face basis.

Distributed Performance — My own applied international research in distributed performance and tactical media over the last fifteen years is centered around synchronous live network-based social activities. Engaging a wide range of technical solutions, my work is a direct utilization of amplified digital networks as the locus for creative action. These areas of research experience include a variety of performance-based activities in theater, dance, sonic, and other expressive arts occurring in or augmented by collaborative networked situations. As a self-proclaimed networker, an area of core awareness in my research is the concept of presence — and how that human presence is directly and indirectly affected by any/all technologies that filter and attenuate that presence: how human expression across a network system is precisely formed and informed by the impression of the technologies used.
more “thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts”

posted
  • place: Berlin - Friedrichshain, Germany

OSPC

busy day, at home online all the time — a performance to check out with Helen Varley Jamieson as hosted by Annie Abrahams’ Breaking Solitude project. along with some stream testing with the backyard radio people for the moving forests event later this week (part of Transmediale). meeting Loki for the first time in awhile for a decent conversation. and otherwise heavy multi-tasking that characterizes a day like this — sending out to local nodes my new contact info here in Berlin, trying to figure out when to see people where, and on and on. a brief foray out, taking the long way to another grocery store, walking in increasingly long circles to check out the neighborhood. haven’t found the organic food store yet. a bakery, but no organic grocers. no Turkish shops either. this is definitely different than other neighborhoods that I’ve experienced in Berlin — it is in the former East (ever-lingering eau-de-coal-fired-furnaces in the air) — although many of the apartment blocks have been re-furbished, there is a different vibe. hope to more specifically explore that in the next weeks.

I read with interest this reaction from Malawi from Martin Lucas on the recent iDC list discussion about Nicolas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. So I asked Martin if I could permanently host the text on neoscenes:

I have been reading with interest the discussion of the ‘hundred-dollar laptop’ and the One Laptop per Child initiative as I sit in Malawi, a small landlocked Southern African nation lodged between Mozambique, Zambia, and Tanzania. According to Wikipedia, the OLPC effort has its philosophical base in the idea that children with laptops will be able to do a certain kind of thinking that isn’t possible without the computer – exploring certain areas – particularly in math and science where computer access offers a qualitatively superior learning experience. Making such machines available at low prices should allow developing countries to bridge the ‘digital divide’, and leapfrog learning. Countries that have signed on include Uruguay. India has given a definite no. Either way, the OLPC initiative is an aspect of ‘development’ even ‘IT for Development.’ How does the initiative square with the reality of a small African nation? … more

posted
  • place: Düsternbrooke, Kiel, Germany

panarchy

running across this term via Paul on the iDC list. as he does a PhD on the subject. another name for how to organize life among humans. never an easy task, everybody leaves it to those who want the feeling of power that it brings.

Panarchy, a term devised to describe evolving hierarchical systems with multiple interrelated elements, offers an important new framework for understanding and resolving this dilemma. Panarchy is the structure in which systems, including those of nature (e.g., forests) and of humans (e.g., capitalism), as well as combined human-natural systems (e.g., institutions that govern natural resource use such as the Forest Service), are interlinked in continual adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring, and renewal. — C. S. Holling

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

gridcosm & slacker

it’s been ages since I’ve spent time checking out gridcosm — a SiTO project initiated by net amigos Ed Stasny and Jon Van Oast pushing a decade ago already. it’s getting very active again, as a new generation of SiTO artists have at it. I’m quite sure it’s the oldest and longest-running collaborative visual network project around. a singularly deep (literally!) visual essay on the past decade of network pop-being. or so. explore it! Jon and Ed are brilliant networkers and an inspiration to me over the years with their easy-going attitudes and intuitive insights into distributed creativity. last time I saw those guys in meat-space was in Montreal at the 1996 ISEA. Keep up the great work!

then, watching Slacker on DVD by Richard Linklater, appreciate the smoothness of film-making and a fluid and spontaneous anti-narrative:

… When young we mourn for one woman … as we grow old, for women in general. The tragedy of life is that man is never free yet strives for what can never be. The thing most feared in secret always happens. My life, my loves, what are they now? But the more the pain grows, the more this instinct for life somehow asserts itself. The necessary beauty in life is in giving yourself to it completely. — Joseph Jones, Slacker actor

posted
  • place: Lakewood, Colorado

jottings to iDC

sotto voce: A model is reductionist. A model will never be the thing itself. (A map is not the territory).

Consider an isolated individual — he/she looks at the world, receives energy into his/her body system. Recognizes patterns of flow, and behaves according to such patterns (over time)… (Learning). Building a model by which to interact ‘successfully’ with the flows around him/her.

OR, an individual is told the parameters of the model (non-experiential learning), accepting what an Other tells (because of the position of power-relation where the Other is more powerful in that social relation).

Science is a collective phenomena at the cusp between these two situations.

Which do we trust most? Our own analysis of the energy flows impinging on our body-system, or the system of the Other?

I believe that over-socialization — a global trend perhaps based on the simple facts of growing population and lessening room — is an inexorable force which demands the second condition to the exclusion of the first. The first is dangerous (to the social): unpredictable, unstable, and requires one to be living at the very front of experience, to learn in the moment, to exist in the momentary flow of being. The second allows leisure, taking the word of an Other about survival parameters, ‘good enough at this time.’

As a teacher I facilitate confidence in the first — trust in ones own sensory input — at the same time as acknowledging that we are products of the second system (more and more) which has interfered with the first process of immediate feedback from body system — embodied learning.

Technology is the means for a social system to codify and implement the (scientific) model such that it may be literally im-pressed on the sensory system of the individual (the collective hallucination). Thus, to counteract this process and to have embodied learning, the im-pressions of technology and of surrounding social system need to be removed (for at least a moment) to allow the individual to feel their socially un-encumbered body, and the flows of life that are impinging on it — without the intervention of non-experiential, second-hand socialized models.

Based on this description, technology is very problematic in that it socially codifies a point-of-view (worldview) which is then applied to the individual who is participating in that social system.

You can chose to trust the momentary sensory input to your system (and be marginalized by that same social system), or you can choose to assimilate into the social system and take on the collective worldview instead.

It’s a sliding scale of participation and reciprocal marginalization, but I believe we are sliding ever towards the second end of the scale. This slide precipitates the long-term denial of embodied and creative life in the stead of socially mandated ‘solutions for living’ like Songdo City.

Uff…

So, coming back to Situated Technologies — they seem to be the result of an (continuous) evolution of the social system — which is now intricate enough to apply/deliver these im-pression systems at an ever more individual/granular level to insure socially ‘proper’ worldviews…

yikes!

posted
  • place: Livermore, California

after isea

a job possibility slips through fingers greased with imaginations of freedom and non-heirarchic relation. no, slips because the structure of relation is, in the case of that particular institution, not flexible or mutable enough to value my praxis. and under-developed skills of institutional negotiation. c’est comme ça. it’s a bit of a come-down and unfortunate for the committee who invited me to apply some weeks ago, but when one door close, another one open, as Fela Kuti would say.

and the iDC list blows up with a critique of ISEA. hard to know where to start with that. knowing so many of the artists involved, but also feeling a bit puzzled about some of the extreme juxtapositions at the symposium and exhibitions and around town. the term interactive city seems most problematic. at one end of the scale, the project Moveable Types and Instant Spaces which had a direct impact on locals, especially the enthusiastic kids playing in the fountain in Ceasar Chavez Park.

and maybe it’s just that city self-promotion in the US these days — an integral part of the ISEA / Zero-One event — is a shrill and aggressive process that is driven by the same ilk of developers and profiteers who have raped the rest of the land into submission.

a blissful 2 kilometers in the outdoor pool. after a week of imbibing in intellectual stimulation, stretching the body a bit in a turquoise 25 meter x 3-meter-deep pool is an absolute luxury.

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: Prescott, Arizona

node relations

Back to the iDC list — consistently marvel how the topics on the list draw me out, especially when I am so overwhelmed with the local in-ma-face reality. The following in response to Josh Levy’s comment (which one in a series of comments under the subject — undermining open source: iTunesU):

> i think Apple has been let off the hook for a long time especially by cultural
> activists. Bill Gates and Microsoft have been an easy bugbear, but Apple are
> monopolists too and have been since they first started making an OS that works
> only with their own hardware.

sotto voce: every social institution seeks to guide (a polite term) the relational expressions and impressions of participating nodes (humans) in discrete reductive pathways which may or may not suit each individual node: adopt or become a non-participating node in that social structure.

Acquiesce to that dominating worldview and participate.

Resist (or simply turn ones back on that whole system) and create new pathways: be prepared for those who are heavily invested in the dominating social institutions to ‘not get it.’ Only those who have the ‘bandwidth’ to leave personal input channels open for other than the dominant pathways will be able to receive alternate expressions and impressions.

Every social structure of any scale greater than two nodes will be reductive because of the need to correlate three or more distinct view-points (points-of-view) — that requires a system of observational/experiential interpolation (protocols) to identify fundamental likenesses between the points-of-view. This correlation process — the development of a mediative ”technology’ to carry (shared) impressions and expressions between nodes — is a fundamental (and necessary) process of social development. It leads to the exemplary structures as are mentioned above. The two examples differ only in scale, though the organizing principles and goals of each are similar (the same!). That is to induce the greatest number of nodes to acquiesce to their protocol-of-relation.

The greater the personal acquiescence, the greater the general feeling of alienation.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

revolution

Outi, a former student sends this link https://www.liveherring.org, a project she’s been working on.

and more iDC mailing list commentary

sotto voce: some comments on the latest threads… probably been said before elsewhere on this or other lists, but when the question of WHAT TO DO? is posed so poignantly on the list. well, hell, I’ve got an answer that I have tested in many situations against many incomplete ideas ;-))

(unfortunately, it cannot be fully transmitted via this particular medium which apportions attention into too-small bits to allow coherence. if anybody is interested in skyping, phoning, irc-ing, or otherwise synchronizing for a couple hours at a pass, I’d be totally willing to engage at that level).

while I have great respect for people who choose resistance as a model for political expression, I believe that more often than not, resistance simply acts as a counter-balancing prop that holds up that-which-is-being-resisted. as a simple anecdote from the distant Reagan era: it appeared that Reagan would take some action — declare a covert war, make an attack on alternative culture, or simply say something stupid — and there would be a flood of artists who would ‘make art’ about that action. this is the definition of (a) reactionary. it seemed, with the original “Teflon” president, that critical actions and expressions, no matter how intelligent or caustic simply built up Reagan’s power. that the repetition of his name in song, discussion, and print only served as a constructive support not for the resistance, but for sustaining the regime. reactionary art. easy to find inspiration (in the embodiment of that-which-is-to-be-resisted), no need to hunt. somehow comforting to have a daily dose of Reagan (or Bush) to get the fires stoked.

revolution, on the other hand, seeks the unknown. it does not seek to form and replicate itself through impressive contact with a dominant social system. if anything, it leans on the void.

a revolutionary praxis is a pathway that is not mapped before moving along it. it is sustained by a desire to face the unknown and to change with the flux of life. it does not advertise its presence except by the wake arising from the actions that transmit its energy to the surrounding milieu.

a revolutionary praxis is by definition sustainable, albeit unstable and indeterminate. it does not seek to capture defined social pathways for its expression. it leaks energy into the immediate surroundings through its presence. leakage is the same as idiosyncratic expression — expression that may not be immediately recognizable to those standing around it because of the idiosyncrasy.

participating in revolutionary praxis demands no allegiance. it demands acquiescence to flows that are greater than any political/social system. it does not shout. it moves always. it cannot be a target because when aimed at, it’s gone. everything is possible.

the site of revolution is the minimal system necessary for change. this system is the exchange that happens between two beings. broadband, unpredictable. without the Self opening freely to an Other who reciprocates, there is no possibility for revolution when revolution is defined by constant movement and change. revolution cannot be posited to happen ‘out there’ in an abstracted social system.

technology is that which mediates between the Self and the Other. IT is just another mediation. when revolution sits on a base of human-to-human connection, the level of mediation can be quite variable, as long as it allows the movement of enough energy to maintain connection. this level is different for different people.

etc, etc.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

reflections on the classroom

to the IDC list

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

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

exotic fare

more than I bargained for, accepting Marianne’s invitation to head downtown for the Acker music night. wheeeehooo. the tuba band in the men’s clothing store was classic, but there were so many kinky juxtapositions between commerce and music. I kicked meself for NOT bringing my vidcam, sheesh, that was a lost opportunity — the harp-opera duet, the masked karaoke duo, the swing band in front of the stuffed marlin in the realty office, the cowboys in the ice cream shop, the washboard king in the saloon, the punk band in the framing store, blues in the Asian-imports place, and on!

posted
  • place: Ukiah, California

netart 2004 – Ping Melody

The netart 2004 exhibition is opening tomorrow, well, today, as Tokyo is ahead of Arizona. Here’s the blurb posted as my curatorial commentary:

where is netart?

When invited to join this year’s netart curatorial crew, I was somewhat skeptical that such an exhibition—with the attendant baggage of dusty artifact carried by the traditional Art World—would be a satisfying way to spend life-limited time when there are always other things to be done. That and the continuous nomadic movement that underlies my participation like a slippery mat, allowing only sporadic concentration of my remote presence hunting for and looking at network-based art and actually thinking about it.

However, collective curation with people who I knew were sensitive to the contingencies of remote collaboration and very aware of the limited understanding that the Art World has regarding net art makes the project interesting. So what then? Do I trawl the now-vast network for something brightly shining or sounding attractive? Eye candies? A hopeless task. The only thing to do was to sift the daily flow of content, during interstitial times when local presence was not demanded—the information flow personally customized by the networker to form a vital link with the remote macro-network—while keeping the overall blast of data at a comprehensible level. Not always possible: it’s getting ever more difficult with each spam-filled day. Especially given that the networker is not fond of reductionist activities which concentrate attention on particular nodes.
more “netart 2004 – Ping Melody”

posted
  • place: Suomenlinna, Finland

Easter or so

The Alvar Aalto vase in the corner of the room is full of a bouquet of tulips I picked up at the Market before getting on the ferry a couple days ago. Why so rare that I buy flowers? Un-necessary expense in a tight year, and all recent last years have been tight. Seems all years have been tight. And yet here I am living rent-free in a small flat in a UNESCO World Heritage site complex, getting a small stipend to be an artist.

But anyway. Pure silent morning, even the far-away sound of the city has vanished, warm, the frost on the roof across the courtyard is only lingering in the shadows. Probably should do a ride this morning with the vidcam. Pick up some quiet ambiance. But will take the day slow whatever.

Son(net) subterfuge over. Didn’t get a debrief from Josephine yet. Seemed to go okay, I had one VDMX glitch, and a restart, but since she also had a stream from NYC, it seemed to work okay, from the limited view I had of the performance via their QuickTime stream. Choreography could have been tighter — at least my knowledge of the cycling — but overall, I think it went well. Probably the most formal outgoing streamed performance I’ve had before. I was nervous even!

19
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-liv’d phoenix, in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,
And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O! carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young
— William Shakespeare