posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

neoscenes.net at +31 years

A few comments on where the site is in the moment:

A year ago my old friend, Howard Rheingold—the Silicon Valley journalist, who, among other activities was part of the WELL and who coined the term “virtual communities”—connected me with a start-up hosting company, ReClaim, that caters to the educational community. I’ve been part of the global educational community for more than thirty years: if the shoe fits! That and I’ve been increasingly annoyed/disgusted with GoDaddy—fifteen years the site host—for re-defining their “unlimited” hosting offers. In 2021 they threatened to kill the neoscenes.net site unless I deleted 30 of the 40 gigs of content. Faugh, enough of that: I signed on with ReClaim immediately. Rescued! This was the sixth major platform rollover for the site since 1993, and it’s only recently that I was able to take the time to revive those 30 gigs of the archival content.

There are still some format/embed and sizing problems with images that accompanying postings before 2009, brought on by fundamental changes in WordPress. It’s an endless process to keep the beast up to even a minimal contemporary standard. Currently there are ~8100 entries, several thousand images, a few hundred videos and maybe 2,000 audio pieces. I’ve decided if I can hit 10,000 substantive entries I will either stop posting, and/or be declared a daisy-pusher.

Screenshot of site in 1995, when hosted on the ISMENNT server in Reykjavík.
Screenshot of site in 1995, when hosted on the ISMENNT server in Reykjavík.

In the meantime, compiling the wretched news on Social Security and Medicare, monthly income will be, well, grim, in this, the richest … country … in … the … world (sorry, gagging on the phrase). Okay, okay, I am a privileged white male who tried to follow his own idiosyncratic path internationally. And, honestly, it feels like the ‘system’ it meting out its interpretation of just punishment for my ludicrous belief that what I did along that path had some socially-redeemable value in cash: it didn’t.

Staring out the window on the unseasonably warm and very dry environs, waiting for the arrival of a colleague to gather the remaining office gear: two MacBook Pros; an iMac; iPad; a couple Dell monitors; 2000 slides in archival boxes; a set of data DVDs; some of the org swag accumulated over the years; university credit card; Mines BlasterCard ID; various cables; and my internal identity as an employee of the Colorado Geological Survey and the Colorado School of Mines. It was a job I took out of desperation to lock in some minimal fiscal security before boredom, age, and ageism made it impossible. Indeed, it filled that role, somewhat, but I’m still in a relatively precarious state. Will soon liquidate the Cedaredge property if a reasonable renter can’t be found, though I hate to give up the Covid-era 2.25% mortgage!

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

quick comment

sotto voce to brainstorms on the question of people’s music-listening habits: I reflected obliquely on this question in my dissertation, examining the concept of radio as a cultural ‘amplifier’ operated centrally (more or less) with the effect of inculcating cultural sameness and diminishing cultural idiosyncrasy — the technology aiding in the ‘formation’ of a collective social fabric. I find that, broadly speaking, there is a continuum along the axis of people who seek difference and those who avoid difference. I also have friends who are still listening to a narrow selection of music that they first were immersed in in high school. And others who are still hunting for new and interesting (to them) things to listen to. It’s a curious phenomena, but I believe related to those two basic factors — the imposition of the effects of a (variably)-centralized technology on a social system, and, again, individual capacities to accept or reject (or just be comfortable with) difference. (And, yes, Ari, it’s not about ‘better’ or ‘worse’, imho, just difference or sameness.)

(And, the over-riding question of capitalist profits on cultural production buried in the middle of the pile of “stars” that we are routinely presented with through those amplification machines) …

posted

the meta-structures of creativity

if creativity cannot be taught, cannot be ‘made’ to happen, how best to approach the assumption that it can be fostered or stimulated within situations?

one answer to this is a consideration of the meta-structure of flows that characterize a particular situation. I have talked about meta-structures elsewhere. to begin with, each instance itself is only ‘separated’ from everything else through a process of abstracted defining. separation is an abstraction, a reduction of the actuality of holistic, immersed, and connected being and presence. so, best not to consider separation, distinction, and particularities. rather, retain a sensibility to all possible flows, or flow in general. easy to say, despite the (English) language being wholly insufficient to deal with such concepts. (Csikszentmihalyi is pretty good at making a natural language argument for flow, though he comes from a completely different direction than me, the conclusions are similar, will explore that when I shuffle through some of the references…)


more “the meta-structures of creativity”

posted

movement (again) and storms

Phoenix sandstorm, July 2011

Morning air is diffuse and golden, a Light fog, perhaps from this event some 200 km away or so. Nothing like the Great Sydney Sandstorm of 2009, but nothing to trivialize either. If only humans would realize that the butterfly that made the storm is the self-same one that they startled from rest when ripping by on their ATV last weekend, celebrating hydrocarbon (inter)dependence in the desert.

… snip …

Movement ends up being a critical combination of idiosyncratic prognostication (what unknown lies ahead of me?) along with the repeated familiarity of bland acculturation (MacDonalds). The known and the unknown form a powerful dialectic in all life-trajectories, all movements. It is these two characteristics dominating individual presence in concert that carries us forward. Preparing to engage both change and the unknown relies on the clarity of present awareness, breadth of past experience, and the level of tolerance for existence in interstitial and autonomous zones. The preparations for movement include gathering enough knowledge and gathering enough things to ensure survival. The existence of known factors bolsters the potential for survival: otherwise questions like “where do we get gas?” and “where are we having dinner?” become overwhelming contraventions to even cursory local voyages of discovery. Not to mention “When are we going to get there?” This ranks very high along with “Where are we?” as being among the most problematic questions, raising high levels of existential angst in the Cartesian order. In the post-Cartesian it simply doesn’t matter!

posted
  • place: Preston, VIC, Australia

back to B&B

Martin Buber and David Bohm — German-speaking Hasidim Jew phil-theo-logist/sopher and Anglo, McCarthy-black-listed quantum physicist. Unlikely combination, but in my practice, my pathway, they elicit a resonance unlike any others, although there are Legion sources of energized engagement that have made my trajectory a rich experience. All those Others who share the way(s). But I will work with these two as they both resonate. Simple, complex. One provoking an imaged-cosmos where there are no things, but only activated orders of manifestation, and this condition of being directly informing the way of interaction and relation between the Self and the Other. And the other thinker, sketching a cosmos which itself comes-to-be in the reality of relationship: within the encounter lies the source of all things.

Both these worldviews are highly idiosyncratic visions of the cosmos and also, consequentially, of human relation, but neither of them are mutually exclusive of the other. I find my own worldview shares at least this characteristic with both of them. But there are other ways in which our models overlap, and it is these pathways of flow which will stimulate the thesis.

The image of humans and their view of the cosmos that I always describe in a classroom setting is: (this after getting to know the students at least a bit) — “it’s as though we are dancing around the Void, each of us, in groups, pairs, alone, catching glances out of the corners of our eyes of it, calling out what is looks like in throat-tones frantic with fear, joy, and wonder. Sometimes a whole group will shout out in unison, the agreed-upon vision. Others stay to speaking the wind. Occasionally we turn to face it on, or are rudely pulled by the shoulder by another who is straying close to the edge. It has no name, yet we all insist on calling It something. Even when we turn our backs directly to it, we can feel it, perhaps even more than when facing it.”

So, idiosyncrasy is a way of movement (as point-of-view needs change), which leads to a clear, albeit self-relative, experience (impression) and the consequent expressions while regarding, receiving, that. Springing from these two pathways (im- and ex-pression) is a third which dictates, in part, the motion of the point-of-view. It is a feedback mechanism which generates, gradually or quickly, a worldview that touches on the Void if only by discrimination against what cannot be directly named.

Okay, working (or “working”) in the office much of the week and weekend, not too effective, but I think I did finally begin to imagine a framework to hang all these words on. And it feels like one that will work. Norie gave me a couple other theses of former students of hers — very interesting works. My intuition about her seems well-placed. And it’s a funny expression of the morphing social network that I’ve participated in the last 20 years. Connected.

And swimming. Hope to hit 100 km/3 months by the time I move on. That’s attainable, easily if I take care of things.

posted

more from Mr. Moglen

In January, investors were said to have put a value of about $50 billion on Facebook, the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg. If revolutions for freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in keeping the powerful happy.

“It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg that he cannot afford to refuse,” Mr. Moglen said.

By contrast, with tens of thousands of individual encrypted servers, there would be no one place where a repressive government could find out who was publishing or reading “subversive” material. — Jim Dwyer, NYT article

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

another 50th

I stick around for Chris’ 50th as his folks, John and Barbara, also come into town on their way between Iowa and Tucson. nice to catch up with them. Barbara reminds me about her chocolate-chip cookies when she mentions she doesn’t have any with her. this references the care packages she would send to Chris when he and I were room-mates back at 148 Washington in Golden — she would usually include a tin of her fabulous cookies which Chris would share generously. got to snag the recipe someday. or, film her making them.

all this visiting. catching up. exploring territories. hearing stories. mapping out lives. recitations, prognostications on weather and politics and social systems. sampling lives. and seeing time pass forwards inexorably.

keeping up appearances (the cost of social participation), requires energy. energy paid into the system. (was this the lament of the Man?) versus what? appearing as The Self is and allowing for personal idiosyncrasy, proceed with no particular thought as to impact, just to channel what comes in life.

Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART … EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who — from his state of freedom — the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand — learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER. — Joseph Beuys

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Qi approaching the Equinox

go to bed reading of Qi in Ted J. Kaptchuk’s treatise on Chinese medicine and wake up early from a deep dream where I was working with a group of boisterous and engaged young people who are somehow brought together by the impulse of Barack Obama. my immediate thought upon waking is why does a political figure enter my dreams? social action is important, sure, along with an interest in community dynamics, but a politician (community organizer none-the-less)? somewhat disturbing, though that thought is outweighed by the energy of the scenario. I suppose I am missing teaching. there will be opportunities for that in Oz, although I will keep it highly restricted to workshops rather than term courses. nothing should get in the way of the appointed task.

the Qi discussion illustrates the absolute difficulty in framing a concept in the language — the specific social protocol — within which the concept did not arise. the fundamental problem of translation. and in this case, translation of a term that is so formative to any worldview built on it that if one adopts that specific term, it will map, literally, where one stands in the world. and the ensuing conclusion that the adoption of another social protocol, language, precipitates a shift in worldview. no surprise there.

one global ‘solution’ to this issue especially in regard to fundamentals like Qi or energy (noting that even here I am making no one-to-one correspondence between the two!), when ‘comparing’ fundamentals, is to consider that each human individually is observing the world, and, at the same time, the social collective that they are participating in exerts an impressive synergy on all these points-of-view, and generates a collectively determined world view. this is the dominant social protocol, their language. Both the individual and collective world view are reductive apprehensions of essentially the same phenomena — that of be-ing in the world — seen from the particular point of view of that individual or collective. Of course, there are the instances where the worldview of the collective is impressed on the individual when the individual is forced to sacrifice personal autonomy to the collective — often through violence or threat of violence. it becomes a deep issue of personal autonomy or idiosyncrasy versus the power of the collective and where to set the line.

… the unusual difficulty in making Qi intelligible in modern Western philosophy suggests that the underlying Chinese metaphysical assumption is significantly different from the Cartesian dichotomy between spirit and matter…. (Furthermore) the continuous presence in Chinese philosophy of the idea of Qi as a way of conceptualizing the base structure and function of the cosmos, despite the availability of symbolic resources to make an analytical distinction between spirit and matter, signifies a conscious refusal to abandon a mode of thought that synthesizes spirit and matter as an undifferentiated whole. The loss of analytical clarity is compensated by the reward of imaginative richness. The fruitful ambiguity of Qi allows philosophers to explore realms of being which are inconceivable to people constricted by Cartesian dichotomy …. Qi, in short, seems inadequate to provide a philosophical background for the development of empirical science as understood in a positivistic sense. What it does provide, however, is a metaphorical mode of knowing, an epistemological attempt to address the multidimensional nature of reality by comparison, allusion, and suggestion. — Tu Wei-ming in Confucian Though

furthermore, the adoption of another linguistic naming system or protocol represents the potential of seeing the world anew. at the same time as it represents a separation from the dominant or previous system. this is an essential feature of the process of immigration, this identity shift that comes through a (linguistic) re-naming the world. but it is also inherent in the process of adoption of any protocol or technology that is produced and imposed on the individual.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

and so on

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable. — John Stuart Mill

Viva idiosyncrasy!

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

imaginary relevance

can a lack of imagination be overcome through intensive observation of the world-that-is? what is imagination? the dream of what-could-be? realizing that there are parameters of be-ing which govern imagining, what can be done to optimize the process?

and, only marginally related to imagination…

sotto voce (posted to brainstorms on back-channel communication and surfing in the wired classroom): I think one of the elephants in the room is the question of relevance. By this I mean — yes, the network provides channels to access information about the apparent subject of the learning experience. But what about the learning approach where a group simply maps their own understanding of a ‘knowledge’ space, and extends that space with their OWN ideas, relevant to their situation, rather than the constant referencing to what is becoming the standard (knowledge) ‘out there’ in the (socially-defined, dominantly-positioned) network. I believe this loss of autonomy of the local group of learners will have DEEP repercussions in the future. Indeed, it represents a loss of idiosyncrasy and autonomy of the learning process AND a deep dislocation of local relevance. It also represents a deep loss of diversity in the dominant social system. (a deep gain in conformity!) This might explain how students are finding ‘public’ education as a real learning situation ever more irrelevant and in need of being avoided or dis-engaged from at all costs.

People will pay attention to information relevant to their situation.

unfortunately, to qualify the last sentence, they will also be easily distracted when seduced into believing something is relevant based on external pressures rather that internal impulses. c’est comme ça!

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

metrics

responding to Roger Malina on metrics on the New-Media-Curating list:

sotto voce: A metric is a standard, and a standard is the fundamental building-block of a (our) techno-social system. We cannot have a techno-social system without standards, so the question becomes how many, how expansive, and how standard? Whenever standards are applied to a system, the system decreases its degrees of freedom and complexity, and increases internal control-ability for the duration of that the system maintains and applies the standards (which corresponds to how long the system has had access the a surplus energy to maintain the order that is required to apply standards).

If we seek for a ‘global’ standard when we have only, say, a national standard, our system will be poorer in its potential for creative innovation. As standards are applied more and more widely across systems (thinking of the development of global standards (i.e., telephone plugs)) idiosyncrasy decreases and the opportunities within which we encounter the un-expected decreases: (oh, as techno-road-warrior I can plug my modem in where-ever I travel, that’s cool — to maintain my position in the techno-social system I need this ability!). one positive aspect, however, occurs when (fewer) standards of a more local sense are applied, there are more opportunities for interstitial (TAZ’s) to arise simply because there are more interstitial gaps within/between larger standardized systems. more “metrics”

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

stories

I break down and have (huh?) to buy Loki a copy of the Harry Potter book (uff, even writing the name here is annoying). Why? Because each summer for the past however many that have been a target for the marketing of Rowling’s tale, someone — me on several occasions — has gotten him the latest installment for an early birthday present for the first of his usual two or three birthday parties. He always has one party in Amurika, sometimes with cousin Lexie, though she’s not here now; used to be that Amma Lillian would make him a nice cake, too. Then, when he gets back to Iceland there is one party for his friends and then another one for the adults in his family. more “stories”

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: Prescott, Arizona

response to Lev

sotto voce: Some comments (on the nettime post from Lev Manovich, Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:22:03 -0800 – his text snips in yellow)…

We Have Never Been Modular…

but we have agreed-upon standards via political hegemony, pressure of dominant ideas, and participating in the easy consumption of ‘whatever works’. And since standards underlie the concept of modularity, I’m afraid that I disagree unless you are talking about another collective “we” that is represented by the demographic you are addressing and are member of.

Thanks to everybody who commented on my text “Remix and Remixability” (November 16, 2005). It was provoked by reading about web 2.0 and all the excitement and hype (as always) around it, so indeed I am “following the mainstream view” in certain ways. But I would like to make it clear that ultimately we are talking about something which does not just apply to RSS, social bookmarking, or Web Services. We are talking about the logic of modularity which extends beyond the Web and digital culture…

And it is worth mentioning that none of those ideas are remotely sourced in digital technologies — they are constructed on the entire precursor socio-technical infrastructure of engineering in general. digital technologies are a ‘final’ product of a long and continuous development process of standardization that started when Empire (or collective social life) was born.

Modularity has been the key principle of modern mass production. Mass production is possible because of the standarisation of parts and how they fit with each other – i.e. modularity. Although there are historical precedents for…

From an engineering point of view, modularity is a subsequent process result following the necessary precursor: the development of standards.

As a simple anecdote, I recall traveling across Europe in the early 80’s. When crossing a border, say, between Italy and Germany, or France and Germany, aside from the ritual rubber-stamping of the passport (and occasional body searches, but that’s another story), one was aware that suddenly, when before the streets were full of Renaults, Citroens, and Peugeots, they were now filled with VWs, Mercedes, and BMWs. To such a degree that if you saw a Citroen Deux Cheveaux puttering around in Bavaria — a car I occasionally had in those days — you would invariably honk and wave (at the ‘hippies’). The currency changed, the language changed (obviously), the places for money exchange shifted, the electric plugs morphed, the telephone rings, cables, and plugs changed. Distance didn’t unless one crossed the Channel where temperature, length, weight, currency divisions, and volume changed to absurdly baffling non-decimal fractions. The socio-political history of the EU (and globalization as well) is mapped over the development of international standards that (have) effectively wiped out those prior social differences.

The history underlying any and all movements towards a pervasive technology (regardless of the geographic extent) is the history of standards development. This precedes any (modular) engineering deployments. (A wonderful USD350 million glitch on a NASA Mars project — when an engineer (collaborating with ESA) forgot to convert between metric and US measurements). Of course, economic (military) hegemony is absolutely connected to this process of standards development. You join in a military alliance and if you are the minor partner, you have to re-bore your cannons to take his caliber of projectile, lest, in the heat of battle, you run out of usable ammunition.

I think a discussion of standardization supersedes the discussion of modularity as most (all!?) characteristics that arise in a description of modularity and its impacts are derived from the ‘textures’ of the socio-technical landscape that are determined by standardization. In a way, collective knowledge as a very broad and general social product is a result of standardization, especially if you are considering, for example, knowledge that spans disparate physical locations. Even with the existence of the basic technology of the Internet, no collective knowledge may be derived without a standardization that transcends the physical restraints on the digital system — a primary one being calibration of time scales, but there are many other calibrations that must take place as well. In the Paul Edwards article quoted below, he points out that there are heavy consequences for detecting global warming because the propagation of measurement standard differences between national and international organizations. An example of the fragility of knowledge building and the importance of standards in collective action.

Strip Latin from biological nomenclature, and international collaboration in the entire discipline is immediately snuffed.

It would seem that the larger the social span of an institution, the greater the built-in desire to establish and propagate standards among its constituents. Maybe remix is the ultimate surrender of the individual to the collective. Standardized idiosyncrasy. Lovely end result.

And at the other extreme, some of the more powerful expressions of artistic creativity take place in a landscape where there is some freedom to deliberately ignore standards (and modularity) and filter lived experience through the idiosyncratic filter of self — re-presenting that lived experience rather than an obsession with filtering someone else’s signal…

I think your mention of musicians sampling published music points to something perhaps more tiresome — related to the instance when rock stars sing about life as a rock star. A simulation of a simulation. TeeVee shows about teevee producers. Escher’s lizard consuming itself. Maybe remix culture will turn out to be so efficient that it will come to that — annihilation by self-consumption of its own mediated worldview…

Maintaining consistency in this huge, constantly changing network is the work of standards. Standards are socially constructed tools: They embody the outcomes of negotiations that are simultaneously technical, social, and political in character. Like algorithms, they serve to specify exactly how something will be done. Ideally, standardized processes and devices always work in the same way, no matter where, what, or who applies them. Consequently, some elements of standards can be embedded in machines or systems. When they work, standards lubricate the construction of technological systems and make possible widely shared knowledge. — Paul N. Edwards

Edwards, P.N., 2004. A Vast Machine: Standards as Social Technology. Science, 304(7 May 2004), pp.827-828.

Measurement is a comparison process in which the value of a quantity is expressed as the product of a value and a unit; that is, Quantity = {a numerical value} x {unit} where the unit is an agreed-upon value of a quantity of the same type. The concept of a quantity such as length is independent of the associated unit; the length is the same whether it is measured in feet or meters. A standard is a physical realization of the definition, with an agreed-upon value to be used as a reference. — Jeff Flowers

Flowers, J., 2004. The Route to Atomic and Quantum Standards. Science, 306(19 November 2004), pp.1324-1330.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

[microsound]

the [microsound] list is discussing what some judge to be a severe lack of quality among those who write reviews of electronic art endeavors (in this case, sonic/music things), following are some comments:

sotto voce: I think there are several ways to go with the concept of reviewing (speaking as someone who once had a music column AGES ago in my university paper — mostly to get back-stage concert passes with the local promoter in Denver)… :-\\

— reviewing is a process of reducing the energy of a performance into a linguistic re-presentation for others to read and presumably ‘get something’ of the original performance.

— the principle behind this is to take evolutionary advantage of the experience of an Other in order to optimize Self-survival. relying on Other’s eyes and ears so as not to become hopelessly obsolete or even lunch meat. to remain viable in a social system one is forced more-or-less to heed this second-hand info as a part of socialization.
more “[microsound]”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

story-placing

Naming of location is an old social process. It is an association of place with event (long- or short-term). Event may be natural or social. The naming process was once local, embodied, idiosyncratic, or personal. Local means that the naming is contextualized by a specific human experience of the place. Embodied means that the naming was propagated by verbal expression, and stored in human memory. Idiosyncratic in that it was the inverse of global — it was understood by and carried situated meaning for an individual or small grouping of people.

Located story-telling

Physical signage is the first step in externalizing the naming process. As social structures become more and more global (de-localized), naming structures have evolved that are more and more universal. (Exactly the same process as any kind of socially-driven standardization in engineering, language, and such). GPS, as a numeric cataloging of discrete points on a socially abstracted mathematical surface is a specific form of representation. Why do we struggle to associate events with those places? Are we continuing the inexorable alienation process that separates our social self from non-standardize be-ing? Is there a praxis that can bring these two systems together without the seeming inevitable separation promulgated by a forced deference to standardization?

When I lived in Iceland, I quickly grew frustrated with the local cultural system for locating ones-self in the landscape. Coming from a long experience of DMA (Defense Mapping Agency)-based mapping and location activities — USGS topo orienteering, geological and geophysical mapping, remote sensing (low-altitude to satellite-based) — the process of reading, comprehending, and making the leap from the ‘coordinated’ map to the territory was a learned but very comfortable intuitive process. Approximating distance, direction, and azimuth vectors from paper to topography was practiced. Watching the stars and sun and making accurate estimations of location and time based on those observations was also standard. Iceland presented a radically different paradigm of location.

When I would come back to town after a weekend hiking trip, the occasion might arise that I would need to describe where I had been. A typical description would be:

“You know the Hellisheidi road?”

“Já”

“Well about four kilometers past the turnoff to Thorlákshöfn we turned due north and went along a valley on the west flank of a low ridge for 6 kilometers and then crossed a small river and followed it west about a kilometer to the top of a valley leading southeast towards Hvergerdi.”

This kind description, one which would have been enough to locate one quite accurately in the landscape of the Sonoran Desert, never elicited much of a response. It was not until after some years of traveling in the remote landscapes of the country with native friends that I realized that I could simply say that I had gone to Grensdalur. That localized name precisely located a particular place in what is often a disorienting fractal landscape. And indeed, the more I traveled in the country, the more I came to understand that virtually every location — creek, molehill, cinder cone, hot spring, forested area, and (ancient or present) farm had a specific name. The more local the people one traveled with, the more precise the located naming (where each name itself represented a more-or-less comprehensive story that ‘mapped’ the human occupation of and interaction with that location). The names came out of embedded human understanding of that exact place at that exact time (or over a period of time). And place, along with its human name, was a reductive product of cultural construction in a language-based culture as Iceland is. This is in certain opposition to an (Imperial) Amurikan approach which is more focused on territories (of acquisition and conquering and control and extraction).

The key to this anecdote is that this system cannot be simulated except at a loss. The loss comes from the separation by greater degrees of mediation between the embodied experience of the place and the means of social transference of the experience that ‘names’ it. It would seem that the embodied, lived experience is the primary source of placement, but equally important is the propagation method that locks a nam(e)ing / story to the place in the collective memory. Relating ‘where I’ve been’ places me in a deep cultural history.

Using one system will not allow a utopian ‘return’ to another system. They exist in parallel to some degree, but they are different paradigms and ultimately different living cultural practices.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

<di>fusion 2003 over

<di>fusion is  over. Surely the last time I try anything like that at a US university. The system simply works against the nature of an open event, from the class schedules of the students to the rigidity of the technical infrastructure. It comes to a question of why the hell to even attempt to do what I do within these structures. Time to leave academia. Easter. Springtime in the Rockies, a phrase that I many times wrote to folks living here when I was away for those 12 years, in a wistful way. Wishing I could find a support mechanism here. Seems everywhere else it is possible, even easy, but here doesn’t work. Hmmmm.

And being passed by, over, through, even in my comfort: From artist studios in East Berlin to academies above the Arctic Circle, to offices in Manhattan, oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and the millions of kilometers in steel- or alloy-skinned vehicles. All those territories, and nothing of socialized value comes from it. Cultivation of idiosyncrasy does not pay. Individual vision is not validated by dominant cultures. Or is that only what I perceive? That the individuality of vision obscures other possibilities directly before the eyes? We see what we want to see. In an eternally remixed society of malaise, negation, and imposed standards of be-ing. (Or are these sentiments merely what I want to see around me?)

And the baited consciousness, rising, rising, rising. While things are down, and language totally falters, it is nothing. It is the lubricant that greases the interstices of the social construct, making human-to-human juxtaposition tolerable.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

overt war begins

and then WAR starts, so much hype. madness. and the situation here. seeing hospitals again. and mortality. why do people want to kill? to add to the misery of living that already smothers so much life on this planet.

whole seasons peel away, onion skin, how many left. Black Elk speaks, through his transcribed words. loudly, clearly, and with no fear for his own idiosyncrasy. and full of knowing relevance and wisdom.