posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

QoD

In the stead of the tedious roll-calling in my more formal university classes, I started to implement a Question of the Day process. At the beginning of the semester, at the start of each session, one student was asked come up with a question and pose it on the QoD form which then circulated around the room during the session, to be filled out as decided by each individual. I placed no restrictions on content, and one didn’t have to answer at all, but at least had to note presence.

This turned out to be a marvelous way to tap into individual/personal energies that students would typically not ‘reveal’ in a classroom setting. As the paper circulated, accumulating answers, it would travel slower and slower as students read prior answers and came up with their own. The process sparked both basic human connection as well as significant discussion on occasion, and on others, amusement. After a couple weeks of me assigning the Questioner, there were usually volunteers at the beginning of each session who had come up with something to query their peers with. Also interesting was the sheer variety of handwriting samples and forms of expression.

Question of the Day, Atlas2000, 25 April 2013, CU Boulder, Colorado.
Question of the Day, Atlas2000, 25 April 2013, CU Boulder, Colorado.
posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

The Disappearance of Liberal Education

[ED: Almost 75 years ago, this essay was published in a collection accompanying the 1954 set of The Great Books of the Western World, published by Britannica Press. While that collection of more than fifty authors—philosophers, playrights, scientists, authors, economists—is mostly all ‘Western and white,’ and definitely men, there is some relevant substance to the contemporary issues facing the US education system contained (t)herein. Primarily, the background question of shared understandings about reality: when these are no longer shared, democracy cannot proceed. At this juncture, I have little hope that the wider social system in the US is capable of pulling itself back from the devolution that appears to be accelerating. Many personal worries surround that. I predict that forms of ‘martial law’ will be declared in the US before four years are up, and I will not be surprised if it begins to appear widely in the next year. By then, soft critique from the ‘liberal’ side of the country will be moot and … wholly inadequate, as has happened before in the bowels of history. Privilege continues to insulate the 1% and [social] media [oligarchs] continue to siphon off the last drops of societal life-blood: community engagement. Shilling instead a form of attention-harvesting that, as with other forms of capital, concentrates ever more power in the hands of ever fewer individuals. What could possibly go wrong?

I can barely continue reading Klemperer‘s “Language of the Third Reich” as it resonates so powerfully across almost a century to this very moment.

The countries of the West are committed to universal, free, compulsory education. The United States first made this commitment and has extended it further than any other. In this country, 92.5% of the children who are fourteen years old and 71.3% of those between fourteen and seventeen are in school. It will not be suggested that they are receiving the education that the democratic ideal requires. The West has not accepted the proposition that the democratic ideal demands liberal education for all. In the United States, at least, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the demands of that ideal are met by universal schooling, rather than by universal liberal education. What goes on in school is regarded as of relatively minor importance. The object appears to be to keep the child off the labor market and to detain him in comparatively sanitary surroundings until we are ready to have him go to work.

The results of universal, free, compulsory education in America can be acceptable only on the theory that the object of the schools is something other than education—for example, to keep the young from cluttering up homes and factories during a difficult period of their lives, or to bring them together for social or recreational purposes.

These last purposes—those which are social and recreational—the American educational system, on a very low level, achieves. It throws young people together. Since this does not take any greater effort than is required to pass compulsory school laws and build buildings, the accomplishment of this purpose would not, at first blush, seem to be a matter for boasting. Yet we often hear of it as something we should be proud of, and even as something that should suggest to us the main line of a sound educational policy. We often hear that bringing young people together, having them work and play together, and having them organize themselves “democratically” are the great contributions to democracy that the educational system can make. This is an expansion of the doctrine that was popular in my youth about the moral benefits conferred on everybody through intercollegiate athletics, which was, in turn, an adaptation of the remark dubiously imputed to the Duke of Wellington about the relationship between the Battle of Waterloo and the playing fields of Eton.
more “The Disappearance of Liberal Education”

posted
  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

to Björn Bjarnason

12 August 1995

To the Honorable Björn Bjarnason, Minister of Education and Culture

As I have noted that you have put up some home pages asking for input regarding education in Iceland, I am transmitting this formal letter to you via email. (I apologize for not writing in Icelandic, but I am not very good at it even though I have lived in Iceland for five years…)

I am writing this letter to urge your continued support of the Icelandic Academy of Art.

Following I will present some personal opinions concerning the future of the Academy as well as some concrete suggestions and proposals. These considerations are based in my experience in teaching at MHÍ for the past five years as well as numerous guest-teaching positions at other Universities and Academies in Scandinavia and the US. Currently I am serving as Chair of the US-Iceland Fulbright Educational Commission (until September 1995) and as (Founding) Director of the Electronic Media and Photography program at MHÍ. My opinions are not necessarily those of either MHÍ or the Fulbright Board.

I believe Iceland is at a crossroads where the choices, opportunities, and outcomes will be largely determined by how the issue of a national educational policy is developed. As the post of Minister of Education and Culture determines this policy, I believe it to be the most critical cabinet posting in the entire government.

It is important to the future of Iceland that attention be directed to the building-up of a competitive and well-considered program of education in the arts. The recent confirmation of intent as expressed by the Althingi and the government in support of the official formation of the Icelandic Academy must be followed up by concrete action concerning the financial, physical, and ideological future of the institution.
more “to Björn Bjarnason”

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

Stamped from the Beginning – Kendi

Continuing to pry my eyes open to the wide ignorance of growing up a privileged white male: a darkness that perhaps could have been dispelled by the obvious evidence appearing, bright, over the years. The tar-paper huts where the elementary school bus stopped, picking up many of the Black students at our rural Maryland school 35 miles outside of Washington, D.C.—south of the Mason-Dixon Line; at ten y.o., riding past “Resurrection City” on the Mall in D.C. during the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968; completely unaware of the geography of roads not taken in that long-ago rural countryside as they passed through the African-American settlements outside of the “regular” towns; blindness mixed with a slowly maturing wonder at and deep respect for African-American creativity, intelligence, and sensitivity. I surely didn’t understand the full import of the lyrics in Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” from his Innervisions album even after doing a report on it in 11th grade English class; nor the complexities involved in a course I took, “The Economics of Poverty,” while taking a year away from engineering school back in 1979. Maybe it was Lightnin’ Hopkins who really cracked open my soul. So many points where knowledge and feeling would have fired a deeper awareness of the ongoing and severely compromised conditions of social justice in the United States. There was not enough curiosity available within privilege.

Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Second trade paperback edition. New York, NY: Bold Type Books, LLC, 2023.

Tracing the historical roots of ‘racist thought’ in Amurika up to contemporary times, this is a challenging read. The extraordinary level of detail and huge number of players across 400 years makes it sometimes difficult to hold onto all the facts. But the main ‘plot,’ racism, is the important point to be dissembled.

Thanks, George, for recommending this one, and thanks, Rick for earlier recommending:

Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Trade paperback edition. New York, NY: Random House, 2023.

and I would also include

Hannah-Jones, Nikole and New York Times Company, eds. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. First edition. New York, NY: One World, 2021.

and

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston, MA: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845..

There are (many) Others whose histories I need yet to understand.

To Phyliss Wheatley
(First African Poetess)

No! Not like the lark, didst thou circle and sing,
High in the heavens on morn’s merry wing,
But hid in the depths of the forest’s dense shade,
There where the homes of the lowly were made,
Thou nested! Though fettered, thou frail child of night,
Thy melody trilled forth with naive delight;
And all through the throes of the night dark and long,
Earth’s favored ones harkened thy ravishing song,
So plaintive and wild, touched with Africa’s lilt;
Of wrong small complaint, sweet forgiveness of guilt-
Oh, a lyric of love and a paean of praise,
Didst thou at thy vespers, Dark Nightingale, raise;
So sweet was the hymn rippling out of the dark,
It rivalled the clear morning song of the lark.

Clifford, Carrie Williams. The Widening Light. Boston, MA: Walter Reid Company, 1922.
posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

controlled ‘change’ or what?

With the current and ongoing waves of technological ‘change’ including the so-called ‘disruptive’ sort like AI, the question comes up about the nature of that change and indeed whether we might use the term ‘change’ at all. Change could be split into a ‘socially-mandated’ kind and all other types of change, but this seems unproductive. Change exists as a ground state upon which the social categorizing of it forms an artificial construct. What is human-driven change? The Institute of Industrial Engineers posits the following with a sense of controlled/controlling humanism:

Change is…..

Change is something that presses us out of our comfort zone. It is destiny-filtered, heart grown, faith built. Change is inequitable; not a respecter of persons. Change is for the better or for the worst, depending on where you view it. Change has an adjustment period which varies on the individual. It is uncomfortable, for changing from one state to the next upsets our control over outcomes. Change has a ripping effect on those who won’t let go. Flex is the key. Even a roller coaster ride can be fun if you know when to lean and create new balance within the change. Change is needed when all the props and practices of the past no longer work. Change is not comforted by the statement ‘just hang in there’ but with the statement ‘you can make it’. We don’t grow in retreat, but through endurance. Change isn’t fixed by crying, worrying, or mental treadmilling. Change is won by victors not victims; and that choice is ours.

Change is awkward—at first. Change is a muscle that develops to abundantly enjoy the dynamics of the life set before us. Change calls out strength beyond anyone of us. Change pushes you to do your personal best. Change draws out those poised for a new way. Change isn’t for chickens. Change does have casualties of those defeated. Change will cause us to churn or to learn. Change changes the speed of time. Time is so slow for the reluctant, and yet it is a whirlwind for those who embrace it. Change is more fun to do than to be done to. Change seeks a better place at the end and is complete when you realize you are different.

Change is measured by its impact on all who are connected to it. Change is charged when you are dissatisfied with where you are. Change doesn’t look for a resting-place; just the next launching point. Change is only a waste to those who don’t learn from it. Change happens in the heart before it is proclaimed by our works. Change chaps those moving slower than the change itself. If you can change before you have to change, there will be less pain. Change can flow or jerk, depending on our resistance to it. Change uses the power invested in the unseen to reinvent what is seen. Change is like driving in a fog – you can’t see very far, but you can make the whole trip that way.

Change is here to stay. — Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers

Change did not come recently, ace, it’s been around all the time, everywhere. And if quantum is any indication, change anywhere in the cosmos is experienced everywhere, simultaneously. And, finally, it’s not a social phenomena, and it’s not ‘driven’ by humans, we just happen to be around for the ride, on the back of the tiger!

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

Peter Lamborn Wilson 1945 – 2022

Dammit. Another passing. Peter Lamborn Wilson, aka Hakim Bey. Got this news and the following remembrance today from friend Konrad Becker, founder of Public NetBase in Vienna.

death

Peter Lamborn Wilson died in his apartment in Saugerties in upstate New York last night, reportedly from a heart attack.

A “Cyberguru” in the nineties he had no email address and wrote his pieces by hand, or on an old typewriter. With 70+ books and titles like Pirate Utopia, he inspired several generations. However, his visceral abhorrence of digital media was softened by his clever use of resources in a digitally savvy environment. As the author of Temporary Autonomous Zone he was guest at the inauguration of Public Netbase and a regular visitor here in Vienna.

Sadly, despite his personal integrity, his fame and colorful queer identity also triggered offending smears and innuendo hard to oppose. In his last months he spoke self-deprecatingly of himself as an old hippy, maybe he was, I just wish there were more of this kind. While many drift into senility in their early forties, he was bright as a button until his last day and had more clever things to say about the electronic media realm than most of the new media experts I ever met.

Following up on his contribution to the book “Digital Unconscious – Nervous Systems and Uncanny Predictions!” and with the support of Autonomedia, Felix Stalder and I ventured into a series of deeper inquiries into the fabric of media un/consciousness.

There is a general narrowing and flattening of the imagination due to the global spread of consumerism and the increasing abstraction and quantification through which the social world is constructed. PLWs work can be understood as an exploration of alternative ways of being in the world that could offer escape routes.

We, by way of Jim Flemming and Fred Barney Taylor, conducted the last interview just a few days ago. In his last interviews he liked to talk of the end of the world which he defined as an ongoing process. His lucid analysis of what went wrong in the last few thousand years was never defeatist rather it was a call to arms.

As he liked to say: Even if you are going to die tomorrow, plant a tree today. The rebellious spirit of PLW and his alter ego Hakim Bey will be immensely missed.

His essay T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism condensed and articulated some core essences of my learning facilitation and media arts praxis while simultaneously atomizing it into a negentropic flow. I ran across it as I began to engage in the European context of media criticism and activism in the early 90s. The Anarchist Library has a wide selection of his other writings well worth perusing. A second fave selection is Overcoming Tourism which strips away the hollow shell of elite migrations of consumption, leaving the displacement of the soul as the core value of movement. Its modest goal … is to address the individual traveler who has decided to resist tourism. Thank god!

Knowing there were thinkers and writers, articulators like Wilson out there formed a supportive web of like-minds when the difficult situations arose in the facilitation of open systems, autonomous zones, wherein spontaneous creative action was not simply welcome, it was the essence of be-ing in such a zone. A few of my own reflections on the TAZ along the way.

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

latter day musing

Teaching is not a behavioral product. It is a lived praxis. (How many times have I used that phrase in this blog? lived praxis). But how to explain a failure, a collapse, an implosion in the learning process? What are these manifestations in life? Recovery from collapse is certainly a learned skill with an ultimate value in life. But irruption or, worse, a slow, tired, wheezing descent into nullification: now that’s some bad shit to deal with.

Taking on a learning situation as an open system—open to change and influence—as a temporally circumscribed instance in a long continuity of flows, of life, this is a singular process to face.

Isn’t it such that knowledge comes from the lived process of experientially reduced and filtered sensual input? Failure loses any negative connotation when considered simply as one path in the infinitely variable flux of sensual experience.

This text started out as a brief meditation on past instances of perceived failure to imbue knowledge — or, to simply imbue lived experience. It surfaced in the context of the widespread, forced turn to remote learning as other forms of proximal human presence become untenable for viral risk. As long as the alienating loss that is implicit in the mediatory technology is recognized and qualified, the remote presence+absence, taken together, may at least sustain some human connection. The loss, however, has profound affect on life.

Lacking the mental focus to continue along that line of musing, I instead jump to the present: which hides and reveals itself. Possible trajectories, once solid, shimmer and vanish: fata morgana, fata americana, fata mondial, fata cosmologica. Other trajectories suddenly loom, darkening, from root chakra, muladhara. And yet others take on material forms: structures, potentials, spaces, and energized flows: water, air, and earth. Eyes open to another spectral zone, seeing mind in things.

The oracle will be cast, commentaries and interpretations will follow, those with ears will hear, eyes will read, if subscribed!

posted

Armin Medosch 1962 – 2017

death

I wanted to write specifically for the blog concerning the shared history with Armin, but all I can manage is to copy (with minor additions) what I sent out to the nettime list. Another nettimer, Felix Stalder wrote some personal and general memories (the thread includes many diverse thoughts from fellow nettimers) and someone put together a pdf on monoskop.

Sharing the experiences of many of you, I can recall numerous encounters with Armin in Helsinki, Riga, Vilnius, Berlin, London, Linz, Hasselt, Amsterdam, and possibly elsewhere, back into the mid-90s. Some good partying, dancing, dinners, and dialogue. Yes, a challenging and idiosyncratic personality, but his extremely wry, dry, and funny humor, his presence, his voice (powerful both sonically and intellectually), and his generosity was a warm and beautiful addition to the many conclaves. Indeed, he was everywhere.

Thanks to the RIXC crew for being a perfect platform in the series of Acoustic Space / Wave editions and exhibitions/meetings that have Armin’s intelligent fingerprints all over them.

I can’t pin-point the last time I spent time with him f2f, I guess it was in 2008 or so, in Netherlands or maybe in London. A raucous dinner somewhere. Oh, no, actually he was at Pixelache 2013 in Helsinki and Tallinn along with a bunch of us Brico people.

He was always to be counted on to turn in a well-considered and passionate commentary when things on brico, spectre, nice, nettime, new-media-curating, idc, and certainly other listservs turned sour or so. In my email archive, I see 495 emails, and smile reading some of them…

As a teacher, he had an instinctual gift to understand the degrees of freedom necessary for learning to proceed. We shared our strategies on how to deal with the institutional frameworks that tended to dull true learning. Back in 2013 he sent me a packet of his (formal) class descriptions (unfortunately, no notes, or other items). I’d be very interested to hear any reminiscences from his former students. Clearly we all learned from him.

I was looking around at items I have in my archive of correspondence with Armin, links and materials he had sent me, and I am wondering if anyone is attempting to collect any written/media traces that are in danger of being lost — I was reading his review of Pixelache from 2007 and there were several interviews he did, but those mp3 links were dead… :-(

I do hope, along with the Stubnitz tapes that there will fall together some of those network fragments. I’d be happy to collect and host anything that folks find that cannot be preserved on some other server…

Echoing Armin speaking about Robert Adrian’s passing just 16 months ago:

“we will always remember you well”

peace,

john

posted

the territory of ignorance

Michael Smithson, a social scientist at Australian National University who co-taught an online course on ignorance this summer, uses this analogy: The larger the island of knowledge grows, the longer the shoreline — where knowledge meets ignorance — extends. The more we know, the more we can ask. Questions don’t give way to answers so much as the two proliferate together. Answers breed questions. Curiosity isn’t merely a static disposition but rather a passion of the mind that is ceaselessly earned and nurtured.

Mapping the coast of the island of knowledge, to continue the metaphor, requires a grasp of the psychology of ambiguity. The ever-expanding shoreline, where questions are born of answers, is terrain characterized by vague and conflicting information. The resulting state of uncertainty, psychologists have shown, intensifies our emotions: not only exhilaration and surprise, but also confusion and frustration.

The borderland between known and unknown is also where we strive against our preconceptions to acknowledge and investigate anomalous data, a struggle Thomas S. Kuhn described in his 1962 classic, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” The center of the island, by contrast, is safe and comforting, which may explain why businesses struggle to stay innovative. When things go well, companies “drop out of learning mode,” Gary P. Pisano, a professor at Harvard Business School, told me. They flee uncertainty and head for the island’s interior.

Holmes, J., 2015. The Case for Teaching Ignorance. The New York Times. Available at: https://nyti.ms/1KGCGLU [Accessed August 24, 2015].

posted

silent existence?

Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which people transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. People are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.

Freire, P., 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

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.

posted

it’s been said before

Mechanical instruments: these instruments will have a great future in teaching. They are automatic auxiliaries to the teacher, the extension of the word and the book. Without a doubt, they are a long way from being perfect, but what marvelous progress has already been made. The gramophone has assisted the teaching of language greatly … It can do the same for music. The Pianola will permit the acquisition of an extensive knowledge of music, of works which one should hear. Machines for projecting fixed diapositive plates or microfilms (photoscope), the cinema in black and white and in color, with texts interspersed in the film with the possibility of interrupting it, will allow knowledge of things and actions which should be seen. The radio (broadcasting …) with its personal apparatus and its great speakers, its musical programs, its lectures, its courses, will permit one to be in direct contact with the outside world, to receive messages, to observe the usefulness of foreign languages, to attempt to understand them …

New Teaching Equipment: education based on the considerations developed here will necessitate the development of teaching materials. The poor material which educational establishments use to-day will no longer be satisfactory.

Otlet, Paul, 1926. L’Education et les Instituts du Palais Mondial (Mundaneurn), Publication No. 121; Brussels: UIA — in Rayward, W.B., 1975. The Universe of Information — The Work of Paul Otlet for Documentation and International Organization, Moscow, USSR: International Federation of Documentation.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

Displace: A Migrating Art Academies Compendium of Ideas: done

Displace: A Migrating Art Academies Compendium of Ideas, Migrating Art Academies, March 2015 (pdf download)

So, Displace finally arrives from the printers — Dovile did a fine job designing it, and overall it looks good thanks to Mindaugas’ hard work as Editor-in-Chief. The editing process went on three times longer than we originally had hoped, but I guess that’s just another lesson on how to estimate the work on a complicated project. Mindaugas is sending me a case of sixteen for the record, and it will be interesting to look through the physical copy to see all the mistakes I might have made! Argh!

Those errors aside, Migrating Art Academies is a brilliant program, period.

Subject: [MigAA] Displace: A Migrating Art Academies Compendium of Ideas
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2015 18:59:36 +0100

Finally long awaited the third Migrating Art Academies publication Displace is out! If anyone is interested in ordering a copy, please do send a short note to info (at) migaa (dot) eu.

Best,
Mindaugas

Displace
A Migrating Art Academies Compendium of Ideas
ISBN 978-609-447-143-8

Download preview @
https://www.migaa.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/MigAA-Displace_preview.pdf

This book — the third Migrating Art Academies (MigAA) publication — marks the end of the third phase of the MigAA program, which, over the course of seven years has grown into a dynamic and vital network of art academies and universities, independent arts organizations, many hundreds of people, and endless ideas. It documents the results of sixteen innovative workshops the network organized during the last four years that took place across nine European countries.

The book includes works, essays, concepts, and other documentary and peripheral material developed before, during, and after the sixteen different workshops. It is first of all presented as a source for any and all emerging artists who search for a means of creating, nurturing, and manifesting their ideas. Secondly, it is meant as a source for inspiring and fresh perspectives for professional artists experiencing a creative block or who are stuck in unproductive patterns of thought. Finally, for those seeking to understand contemporary art and its challenges, it constitutes an excellent window into the surprising variety of practices with which the participating artists addressed the issues that confronted them.

In order to emphasize the distributed nature of the MigAA network, the book is designed with no particular hierarchic continuity. The only source of continuity is the page numbering that follows the chronological sequence of the laboratories: each of them are separated into chapters corresponding to the name of the laboratory. The chapters are presented in a random order to reflect the open nature of the network. Each laboratory/chapter is formatted the same: identifying where it took place, and providing the relevant information on the input, the process, and the output, as well as an introduction section and a list of participants.

The publication of this book could not have been possible without the enthusiastic and farsighted support of the EU Culture Programme 2007-2013, Nordic Culture Point, and the Lithuanian Council for Culture.

// Migrating Art Academies https://www.migaa.eu
// https://www.migaa.eu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/migaa

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Ecosa Institute and more

Another interesting meeting this month — portending an engaged 2015 — this crossing with Antony “Tony” Brown, the founder of the Ecosa Institute. A possibility to collaborate or so, as they make a systems approach in their educational program that focuses on “regenerative” ecological design. They are on the verge of a major expansion of their mission as a result of a substantial philanthropic gift that allows for a new facility to be built in the Granite Dells. Tony founded the .org about fifteen years ago, and it’s a pity that I didn’t find them sooner than this week. Better late than never!

I’m still learning how to live in a small town. Can’t be a selective hermit. So, made a serious effort to ‘get out.’ Following my own advice to students — do everything [whups, got to change that — this was the original John Cage text — I did a remix on that]. Find the interesting people doing interesting things, one can hardly go wrong.

But it’s been difficult to do this reaching out with the Displace book running far over the allotted month of editing. Many ten-hour days sunk into that, and it’s not going to press until after the New Year now, I think. Mindaugas just sent the cover proof yesterday. These editing projects always run over. It’s rarely possible to estimate what effort it will take to make readable texts from unknown sources.

posted

The Machinic Structure of Institutions

What would a revolutionary academy be. It must, of course, have revolutionary aims; not just with respect to the academy itself, but with respect to the broader social world. At the level of its organization, it would have to have a different hierarchy than the existing one we find organized around administration, staff, tenured faculty, adjunct faculty, and students. Here we might think of Guattari’s La Borde. It would have to challenge the “star system” of the academy—while also honoring great accomplishments of thought and scholarship—refusing to restrict itself to, for example, the history of philosophy and masters, but rather functioning as a genuine site of new knowledge production rather than merely inherited tradition. Somehow the course would have to navigate between the transmission of existing knowledge and the creation of new knowledge. It would have to produce graduates that don’t simply reproduce the existing system of neoliberal capital and privilege, but that form new ways of life. Finally, it would have to navigate these issues of livability, of being able to find a sustainable place in the world when exiting the institution.
Bryant, L.R., 2014. The Machinic Structure of Institutions: A Report on the Revolutionary Academy. Larval Subjects.



Somewhat conservative in the fact that it doesn’t dispense with institution completely, but otherwise a solid, pragmatic call (on ears that are packed, sloughing, with the (reified!) waxen dross of normalcy). bwah…

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

learning? teaching?

To really gain from an educational, learning encounter, one needs to be in dialogue with the person one is communicating/learning with. Roles may be played (i.e., ‘student’ – ‘teacher’) but whatever the case, it has to be a dialogue, not a sequence of monologs, not bound by fear to a strict set of social protocols, not a call-and-response between priest and supplicant: it has to adapt to the contingency of knowledge differentials between the two. Everyone should be learning within the encounter. At its foundation, it needs to be an open exchange, filling in the open spaces that are hollowed (hallowed!?) by ignorance.

posted
  • place: Glade Park, Colorado

Day 62 – Hawk Moon Ridge

Since the last entry was Day 04, what to be said? Life flickers by in this place, that place, and there is no change in the acceleration that drives day-to-night-to-week-to-month-to-year. The sunrise shifts further to the south, nights are slightly cooler, though there is still potential for hot weather for another six weeks at least. Heading south sooner than that, yup. South to another temporary situation. An unusual autumn where school starts up and I am not involved. This time, thankfully, at least not in the CU Art Department. Never felt that way before, but the sting of the two courses in the spring is still with me. Wondering how the elements of a system in decline can so converge such that classroom learning becomes the maintenance of an adversarial position. But also putting it behind me as it was an anomaly in the bigger picture of my own learning facilitation efforts over the years.

Anyway, Collin and Marisa are heading homeward from the Great White North with stories of bears, and fish, and the expansiveness of the natural system that is Alaska, my native state. So the next days will be filled with tidying the domain, re-compacting all my gear so that it fits in the truck for the drive south. No real camping this summer, between Europe and Hawk Moon Ridge, but being here is more like deluxe camping, with hiking and mountain-biking into amazing spaces right out the door. I didn’t get to explore the area as much as I would have liked, but did get some decent new work done and a few good hikes and rides. That’s enough.

posted
  • place: Glade Park, Colorado

expectations and deliverables

It is strange that we expect students to learn, yet seldom teach them anything about learning. We expect students to solve problems, yet seldom teach them about problem solving. And, similarly, we sometimes require students to remember a considerable body of material, yet seldom teach them the art of memory. It is time we made up for this lack…

Norman, D., 1980. Cognitive engineering and education. In D. T. Tuma & F. Reif, eds. Problem solving and education: issues in teaching and research. Hillsdale, N.J: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Ain’t this the truth! The necessary tools and ways of going are hardly addressed in the big schema of mo-dern education. period.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

time for closing

Classes begin to wind down/wind up: finals this week. Ending dialogues and monologues.

At the moment, sitting in the final for the History and Theory of Digital Art. The final consists of a collaborative effort to modify the general class notes into the ultimate ‘cheat sheet’ for a final examination on the History and Theory of Digital Art. The collective notes accumulated through the efforts of a different pair of students each class session using a single google doc to take notes on. Among other issues, this obviated the HUGE distraction of ancillary web-surfing in class. And it provides an excellent exercise of collaborative knowledge-building (which should be the standard for learning facilitation at this point in time). The down side was the lack of coherent group synergy which stems from at least two factors — irregular attendance and me not enforcing the ‘dialogue’ assignments weekly (which is related to the attendance issue). Turns out that many of the dialogue situations were arbitrarily skipped by students, and so the effect that worked well in the consistency of the MiT class failed in the instance of this class. Inconsistent attendance is a primary sign of the lack of importance of the class, that it is not compelling, or that there are more pressing things than school to be engaged with.

It was self-determined how to distribute tasks on what/how to address the upgrade. The first hour was divvied up, one class day for each person to mod. Then the second hour is used for anyone to work on any part of the text. The balance of the class session is used to clean-up.

The result? Is it a proper cheat sheet? What is collaborative knowledge generation anyway?

Why did these two art classes proceed so poorly compared to similar ones that I taught a decade ago at CU. Are my standards or expectations too high? Not high enough? Especially in comparison to the “Meaning of Information Technology” group: night and day. I need to have smart and engaged students to establish and sustain an energized dialogue. The challenge of immature students, dis-engaged, dis-interested — divested from their own learning process by the structural violence of the system — may be lessened depending on their raw precocity, but in the end, they do need to step up and away from passive learning paradigms. The problems were definitely enmeshed in my own response to a broad lack of attentiveness — a reactionary trait of which I am guilty. My response is to simply pull away incrementally from what is normally a condition of open sharing.

As per usual, every class evolves its own characteristic vibe. Thank god the cumulative total vibe is in the positive. Else learning facilitation would be a non-starter.

A fundamental question: Is this a systemic thing, versus a localized immediate problem? That’s all I can do, ask the questions, and see about discovering actionable intelligence. And change conditions when possible, and relinquish control when necessary.

posted
  • place: Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington and South Acton, Massachusetts

Wednesday, 01 May, 1963

Worked on photo specs: still in a quandary about how to organize the material.

In the PM I went to the latest IEEE PGEM Spring Lecture by Assoc. Prof. Rosenbloom of HBS who talked about “Performance Evaluation.” He thinks that “management by exception” is no longer universally applicable. He would use the same tool of evaluation, i.e., budgets, skeds, task definition, work planning sessions, but not regard the initial plan as infallible, using these tools to generate learning and the basis for new plans. I suppose to an experienced manager, this may sound like what he does; possibly so in the long run. The managerial dilemma or problem is how to keep happy those who want to work in a particular field and still channel off sufficient effort or results to operate the business at a profit.

Overcast

Talked to Prof. Tucker at MIT re: a phone system for PSC for monitoring purposes. Went in to see him arriving about 1:40 PM. He was most cordial, and gave me several good suggestions: Use WECO 415H subscriber magneto sets at each remote station w/ a 211A handset that could be plugged in to the 415H; a Signal Corps switchboard on the radio room; in place of the SC units a party line could be used, with ongoing codes. I listed the fx stations: 1) Radio Room, 2) TV Camera, 3) SS Room/TV Monitor, 4) Hawey Room, 5) Under Pulpit, 6) Attic 1, 7) Attic 2, 8) Attic 3, 9) Balcony Center, 10) Pulpit

Went in to PSC arriving about 6 PM; tried to remove the AC 110 volt ground on the base of the B&H 35mm slide projector. Wayne Cobb was on deck to operate the 16mm projector for the 6:30 service & the 35mm for the 9:30 PM service. Left at 7:40 and went out to the Babson Institute for the last IEEE Spring lectures on Management — this one was on “Performance Evaluation”, by Dr. Rosenbloom of HBS; he thinks “management by exception” is passé; he would use the same tools, but assumes that the initial plan is not infallible and that deviations therefrom are evidence of 1) inability to foretell the future, and 2) the need to evaluate for learning.

Talked to Geo Pickering; he wanted some of the small boxes put out for 35mm slides, and said the noon speaker with the 35mm slides looked away from the microphone & her voice was lost. While at PSC I tried to get Lake, but he wasn’t home (VI3-3131 Braintree). He called before I returned home at 10:20 PM; called him back & made arrangements to have him deliver a lavalier mike to Ed Poore in the morning.

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essay-grading software

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/science/new-test-for-computers-grading-essays-at-college-level.html

Brian Holmes, who runs “Continental Drift” responded to that article on AI grading of college essays as follows:

> The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short
> written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.

Such as:
a. raw domination
b. rank servitude
c. outright revolution

[Note: You can only tick one of the boxes…]

LOL Brian! (with significant sighing on the side) — just finished a class this morning talking with my students about this very issue … (c) will occur at the interstice of the human encounter of Self with Other, so that it is indeed available instantly, all around, in the classroom, in faculty meetings, on the street. Reminding the students of this (and helping them establish a lived praxis based on the vitality of those encounters) is my choice, so that suggests changing (c) to ‘facilitating open encounter and engagement’…

The only future I can see beyond submission to the economic destinies of robotization and outsourcing is some kind of political organization, my friends. To be sure, the 60s, reinterpreted and repurposed by neoliberal ideology, trained us all against any kind of hierarchy whatsoever. We are so “free” that power is walking all over us. The capitalist democracies have gone down the very path predicted by Weberian sociology: complete rationalization for accumulation’s sake. The university is now envisioned as a largely automated service provider for the human-capital needs of corporations. That’s endgame, because without a public institution for critical perception, analysis and deliberation, the only social steering mechanism is the imperative to accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, until the last ton of coal is effectively burnt and we’re all reduced to a cinder. Isn’t that kinda obvious now? What’s the next step?

At this point I am quite pessimistic that the evolutionary drive to guarantee propagation of the species, a drive inseparable from life itself, and which includes the need for consuming any and all energy necessary for survival-to-reproduce, can be short-circuited by any altruistic or even pragmatic socio-political (community, nation-state, supra-national) agendas, ever. The social concept of ‘use less’ (promulgated mostly by the ever-unsatiated über-consumers of the developed world) cannot trump evolutionary hard-wiring. I believe we will do exactly as you say at the end of your paragraph.

That question of what to do next, now, is perhaps moot. The question of what to do, after, will present itself in the immediacy of the moment. The situation we as a species have made is not of such extremity to preclude that life in other forms will not continue, and our species will likely exist in greatly reduced numbers. This may simply provide the planet with other opportunities to re-evolve after (solar-sourced) energy has again been accumulated to a level and form that allows for another burst of life progression.

This will clearly not happen in the short term of (our) human life-times.

posted

still teaching, or what?

Indeed, yes, apparently still teaching. Spring Break lost to a bug that flattened numerous other folks before it finally settled in my chest for two weeks, faugh. It was robust enough to consume my entire break, setting me behind a solid two weeks on all the tasks that I needed to get done before expatriating in five weeks.

Teaching proceeds unevenly. Half the time it feels like baby-sitting as the art students seem to resist most openings to expressive potential. They seem to resent being prodded into a space of the unknown — am I pushing too hard, not enough? The dynamic of this resistance is hard to parse. Do they simply not recognize the opening? Or is it fear, or simply an inability to expand into the dimension of open creative situation that I am facilitating? The fear isn’t one of those palpable, sweaty things, but more a deeper and amorphous presence. It appears to thrive in the university art/art history department — although it is perceptible elsewhere, as soon as one begins to look — but not as such a dominant presence as in the digital art classes (versus the Meaning of Information Technology classes which cross disciplinary lines dramatically). Why does it have a home in an area of activity, a ‘discipline,’ that should be largely free from such negative emotion? One adjunct colleague who is leaving this university for a far better situation at one in Texas seems to get the students moving, but he’s been here for a ten-year stretch and has settled on a process that takes into consideration whatever it is that is going on here. It’s the same thing that is feeling so completely oppressive for me. After a decade away from US academia, this past year as CU-Boulder has brought my confidence in teaching (more accurately, the facilitation of learning) to a grinding dead end. Maybe that’s the problem: facilitation rather than dictation. What gives?

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

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!

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

First Day of Class

blurr. faces, voices, situations; I seem to have a penchant of being boring when introducing an open framework. At least to the jaded percentage. This comes as an effect of talking about things rather than doing things — I tend to like to talk a situation out, establishing a framework, then going for the open-system madness. Then there is the physical situation — window-less rooms, bunkers for indoctrination: smart classrooms. hints at the problem with smart phones. Why do we need smart devices to live by/for/with? Is not innate intelligence enough to survive on? Doesn’t evolutionary thriving of the species suggest that our intelligence is enough, or are our tools necessary?

Why can’t learning be undertaken in a completely positive way? Getting on with things. Getting on with the things that matter, that resonate, that are absolutely relevant to the undertones of wide-scaled life (specifically not relevant to the transitory fluff of the hyper-mediadrome that speaks only to itself and in only the case of self-aggrandizement).

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

stasis, spectacle and speed? unh-unh!

I just ran across this excerpt from Geert’s first internet-oriented book—way back in 2003—in the chapter on “tactical education” entitled “The Battle over New Media Art Education.” This is a section of that chapter titled Neoscenes Pedagogy:

The Digital Bauhaus concept may be a fata morgana amidst a never-ending institutional nightmare. The new-media subject appears at the end of a long global crisis in the education industry. Decades of constant restructuring, declining standards and budget cuts have led to an overall decline of the .edu sector. There are debates not only about fees, cutbacks in staff and privatization but also about the role of the teacher. For a long time the classic top-down knowledge delivery methods of the classroom situation have been under fire. In a response to the education crisis, the American-Scandinavian John Hopkins calls for a cultural shift towards alternative pedagogies. His pedagogy, close to that of Paolo Freire, is based on a combination of face-to-face and networked communication, keeping up a “flow of energies from node to node.” Hopkins, who calls himself an “autonomous teaching agent,” has roamed between Northern European universities and new-media initiatives and currently teaches in Boulder, Colorado. His spiritual-scientific worldview might not match mine, but he is certainly my favorite when it comes to a radical education approach. Hopkins prefers the person-to-person as a “tactical” expression of networking, avoiding “centralized media and PR-related activities wherever possible.” Hopkins’ “neoscenes” networks are “a vehicle for learning, creating and sharing that does not seek stasis, spectacle and speed.”

In a few instances, Hopkins’ “distributed Socratic teaching strategy” has culminated in 24-hour techno parties with a big online component to make room for remote participation and exchange. The challenge with the live remix streams was to find out collectively “how exactly to facilitate autonomy and spontaneity.” For Hopkins teaching is a “life practice,” an action that embodies “art as a way-of-doing.” He calls his style “verbose and densely grown (not necessarily meaningful either ;-). but I do try to say what I am thinking and practicing … ” Hopkins tries not to make a distinction between learning, teaching and being taught. “It is critical that I myself am transformed by the entire engaged experience.” As a visiting artist, and usually not a member of the “local academic politburo,” Hopkins can build up personal connections within a local structure, free to “catalyze a flexible response that is immediately relevant,” while maintaining a creative integrity that is based in praxis.

. . .

John Hopkins: “I start my workshops with a sketching of some absolute fundamentals of human presence and being in the phenomenal world. This beginning point immediately becomes a source of deep crisis for some students precisely because they are expecting the vocational top-down educational experience of learning a specific software platform and making traditional artifacts.” John finds people who focus on software platforms “incredibly boring. It’s like amateur photo-club members comparing the length of their telephoto lenses or having conversations about national sports. It’s a code system for communication that is often mindless and banal. While at some level, my students are forced to confront the digital device. I encourage them to be aware of how they are interacting with the machine, what is comfortable and what is not.”

. . .

John Hopkins compares Scandinavia and the USA, places he knows well. “Because of a well-funded cultural industry sector in Scandinavia, artists who are potential teachers are not forced into teaching as happens in the US. This has kept the stagnation of the tenure-track system, something that dogs US higher education, out of the way. In the US, artists who have any desire to live by working in some way in their medium are more often than not forced into academia because there is no other social context for them. They may or may not be teachers in any sense. There tend to be more permeable and productive interchanges between the ‘art world’ and ‘academia’ in Scandinavia and northern Europe, realized by cycling a larger number of idiosyncratic individual teacher/artists into contact with students.” Isolated campus life. slow and complicated bureaucracies, and the politically correct atmosphere at US universities are not ideal circumstances for a hybrid “trans-disciplinary” program to thrive. However, the campus setup does help to reduce distractions, once students know what they want and the resources are in place.

Lovink, G., 2003. My First Recession, Rotterdam, NL: V2-NAi Publishers.
posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

Hören was passiert

Asking questions.

There are several ways to do this, perhaps more.

The first way is to assuage individual (personal ignorance) asking about things that you don’t understand

The second way is to ask questions that may reveal what you observe others not understanding

The third way is to ask questions that the teacher/facilitator doesn’t understand

The fourth way is to ask questions that you do not understand

I am sure there are other ways.

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policy blindness

Scientific knowledge and new technologies are the building blocks for long-term economic growth — “the key to a 21st-century economy,” as President Obama said in the final debate.

So it is astonishing that Mr. Romney talks about economic growth while planning deep cuts in investment in science, technology and education. They are among the discretionary items for which spending could be cut 22 percent or more under the Republican budget plan, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science [relevant link], the plan, which Mr. Romney has endorsed, could cut overall non-defense science, engineering, biomedical and technology research by a quarter over the next decade, and energy research by two-thirds.

Mr. Romney seems to have lost sight of the critical role of research investments not only in developing new medicines and cleaner energy sources but also in creating higher-skilled jobs. — Neal Lane, former head of the NSF.

Free Market! Free Market! Greed Market! Greed Market! It fulfills all desire and need everywhere all the time. Some of the Republican base who have changed their colors: (what, a Mormon? My former experience in (Republican) Fundamentalist circles recalls that Mormonism was branded a cult by a large majority of those folks). People are so friggin’ cynical and greedy that they will put aside their relativist belief system and vote for someone who was only recently considered to be a member of a cult — as determined by their own cult! Just more of the self-centered hypocrisy that seems to suffuse the US system. (uff) (Of course, pretty much any pathway might be considered a cult, it all depends on the metric, and the lack of autonomous self-determination of the ‘participants’. Isn’t media the foundation of any cult? The Cult(ure) of MEdiation. And the way some approach science, usually through a lack of understanding, blah blah blah…)

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

Trans-disciplinary Dialogue and Holistic Knowledge Generation

At its core, trans-disciplinary collaboration is chiefly a test of how to find the words, and within the words, the cumulative meanings that might span what is often a wide gulf in understandings. In general, the use of language in a transdisciplinary space is a particular challenge that, to a significant degree, determines the successful outcome of the attempt to bridge, fuse, or simply transcend disciplinary spaces altogether. Of course, beyond the words, there is the imperative for energized and embodied collaborative action, Freire’s ‘praxis'(1): change is the presumptive goal of the trans-disciplinary encounter. However, what I call the ‘meta-conditions’ of the human encounter are as or even more important than strictly linguistic exchanges. Meta-conditions deeply impress the qualities and potentialities of the human encounter that are the core of learning and change. In this White Paper I will reflect on these meta-conditions necessary to facilitate trans-disciplinary communication and collaboration. I will do this as a former engineer, a practicing ‘media’ artist, and in the context of 25 years of experience(2) teaching across art, design, engineering, and technology. The instance of my own current planning and facilitating of a (pre-existing) course I was invited to teach in the Fall of 2012 will function as an armature for the reflections. A former student of mine, Director of the TAM (Technology, Arts, and Media (3)) Program, that is hosted within the ATLAS Institute (Alliance for Technology, Learning, and Society(4)), offered me one section of “The Meaning of Information Technology”(5) course at the University of Colorado – Boulder.(6) Among other threads, my reflections will touch on re-defining the term ‘technology’ in such a way that allows more powerful critical access to that often-self-obscured aspect of our social existence, regardless of disciplinary background. I will also make some critical observations about what I understand as the deep and problematic assumptions under-girding much of contemporary education.

—————–

1) Freire, P., 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum.
2) https://neoscenes.net/info/cv/
3) https://tam.colorado.edu/
4) https://atlas.colorado.edu/
5) https://tam.colorado.edu/teaching.php (general program requirements for the course)
6) https://colorado.edu

posted

Trans-disciplinary Dialogue and Holistic Knowledge Generation

[Rejected proposal for NSEAD white paper]

At its core, trans-disciplinary collaboration is chiefly a test of how to find the words, and within the words, the cumulative meanings that might span what is often a wide gulf in understandings. In general, the use of language in a trans-disciplinary space is a particular challenge that, to a significant degree, determines the successful outcome of the attempt to bridge, fuse, or simply transcend disciplinary spaces altogether. Of course, beyond the words, there is the imperative for energized and embodied collaborative action, Freire’s ‘praxis'(1): change is the presumptive goal of the trans-disciplinary encounter. However, what I call the ‘meta-conditions’ of the human encounter are as or even more important than strictly linguistic exchanges. Meta-conditions deeply impress the qualities and potentialities of the human encounter that are the core of learning and change. In this White Paper I will reflect on these meta-conditions necessary to facilitate trans-disciplinary communication and collaboration. I will do this as a former engineer, a practicing ‘media’ artist, and in the context of 25 years of experience (2) teaching across art, design, engineering, and technology. The instance of my own current planning and facilitating of a (pre-existing) course I was invited to teach in the Fall of 2012 will function as an armature for the reflections. A former student of mine, Director of the TAM (Technology, Arts, and Media (3)) Program, that is hosted within the ATLAS Institute (Alliance for Technology, Learning, and Society (4)), offered me one section of “The Meaning of Information Technology” (5) course at the University of Colorado – Boulder (6). Among other threads, my reflections will touch on re-defining the term ‘technology’ in such a way that allows more powerful critical access to that often-self-obscured aspect of our social existence, regardless of disciplinary background. I will also make some critical observations about what I understand as the deep and problematic assumptions undergirding much of contemporary education.

John Hopkins Boulder, Colorado 14 August 2012

1 Freire, P., 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum.
2 https://neoscenes.net/info/cv/
3 https://tam.colorado.edu/
4 https://atlas.colorado.edu/
5 https://tam.colorado.edu/teaching.php (general program requirements for the course)
6 https://colorado.edu

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Dialogue and Learning

My educational philosophy is built on the existence of a simple phenomena that I observe on a daily basis while moving through life. It is this — where two people can come together and have an encounter. If this encounter is at least somewhat free of conventional social strictures, and the two individuals are able to find an open path for the sharing of their life-times and energies, there arises a special situation. Following this encounter the two might step away from this encounter, both are inspired, both with an excess of energy circulating within themselves, both at a higher energy level than when they arrived an the instance of the encounter.

It is this excess of energy arising from the situation that becomes a source of creative action.

This is a fundamental in learning: To face the unknown Other, to find an open pathway for an exchange of energies, and experience the potential of energy exchange.

The degree of openness in the encounter is heavily influenced by the techno-social system that the two individuals are embedded within and the meta-conditions of their encounter.

Moving away to a wider perspective, a classroom is a multiplicity of these dialogues that have the potential to generate absolutely relevant knowledge and experience sets for/among all participants in the encounter process.

As an educator and facilitator, it is my role to change the characteristic of the space/conditions for the encounter such that there are more possibilities for it to find or create open pathways. One primary task is to be aware of and push back at least a subset of the imposed social relations/protocols that govern the encounter in order to uncover possible alternative pathways for creative collaboration.

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

Huxley’s education

In a world where education is predominantly verbal, highly educated people find it all but impossible to pay serious attention to anything but words and notions. There is always money for, there are always doctorates in, the learned foolery of research into what, for scholars, is the all-important problem: Who influenced whom to say what when? Even in this age of technology the verbal humanities are honored. The non-verbal humanities, the arts of being directly aware of the given facts of our existence, ale almost completely ignored. A catalogue, a bibliography, a definitive edition of a third-rate versier’s ipsissima verba, a stupendous index to end all indexes – any genuinely Alexandrian project is sure of approval and financial support: But when it comes to finding out how you and I, our children and grandchildren, may become more perceptive, more intensely aware of inward and outward reality, more open to the Spirit, less apt, by psychological malpractices, to make ourselves physically ill, and more capable of controlling our own autonomic nervous system – when it comes to any form of non-verbal education more fundamental (and more likely to be of some practical use) than Swedish drill, no really respectable person in any really respectable university or church will do anything about it. Verbalists are suspicious of the non-verbal; rationalists fear the given, non-rational fact; intellectuals feel that “what we perceive by the eye (or in any other way) is foreign to us as such and need not impress us deeply.” more “Huxley’s education”

posted
  • place: Bundoora, VIC, Australia

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”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

diversions

The primary task to undertake in a learning situation: pushing back the deep im-pressions of attention-diverting noise: to the degree that the actual subject of inquiry is secondary. a practice of facing the unknown which is the core of learning. attentively facing the unknown. mediating technologies tend to wrap us in a cocoon of dis-awareness of our own senses and from the flows that we are immersed within, making it impossible to focus attentions on the flows to begin with… ach! it’s such a pervasive problem. It becomes a powerful motivation to engage (young) people and to push back these im-pressing forces and watch them begin to breath freely again and then, to watch them begin to wonder what it is that they would like to learn about, then participate with them as they approach the unknown and engage it…

posted
  • place: Whanganui, New Zealand

Energy, Creative Action, and Sustainable Systems Workshop – Day 8 – eNZed

The official blurb for the workshop:

This workshop will draw on Hopkins’ international experience in facilitating creative encounters in the context of the Temporary Autonomous Zone. With an open structure for engaged and focused dialogue, the workshop will explore a powerful energy-based worldview that can open up new awareness of social, cultural, and natural systems. The dynamics of collaborative human relations confined within an attentive space is guaranteed** to generate provocative and inspiring outcomes. Creativity is, by definition, about the formative flow of energy between living organisms. We will move through a variety of environments (including on the river by waka) as we share life-time in the workshop. The workshop will augment the processes of any creative practitioner with a profound, situated, and practice-oriented conceptual toolbox that address the following areas and more:

(Keywords in no particular order): energy, creativity, thermodynamics, technology and techno-social systems, art, attention, entropy, learning, media, networks, participation, process, virtuality, creative action, human presence, Light, human encounter, mediation, concentration, optimization, pathways, meals, sustainability, simplicity, synchronicity, auspiciousness, and serendipity.

**on the condition that you bring along your entire Self, not merely your body, mind, and spirit

posted
  • place: Whanganui, New Zealand

waka – Day 6 – eNZed

learning Maori numbers, Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

Up early again, before all the girls are off to school, the morning routines are quite entertaining to witness. Compared to similarly-aged kids in other places (the US!), all the kids I’ve met here seem quite relaxed. Is it the culture here, or? There is a laid-back quality, but I haven’t been here long enough to see how it suffuses through the society. There have to be substantial social issues, with colonialism having left such an influence on things. The stack of histories of NZ that Kerry loaned me before traveling told of savage open conflict until around the time of the US Civil War which is quite recent. Though no longer in direct living memory, it is still quite close. It’s is obvious, from the clear-cut timbering alone, seen from the air, that there is an ongoing and deep conflict over land-use, with powerful development and/or exploitation forces. On the other hand, there are definitely strong voices for nurturing the environment (and human lives on the island) back to something more sustainable.

We take a visit to the waka (canoe) boathouse to check on things — there is a crew of young gals who are practicing waka racing for the national championship. A group of absolutely charming young women.

Mike, our main Maori host comes by, what a expansive and powerful spirit he has! Julian has really cultivated some amazing connections with people here. Everyone met so far has been friendly, open, welcoming, relaxed, ready with a smile, along with some challenging/enLightening conversations.

Hardly time to make any entries now that the road has come up to meet my feet, so to say. Prepping mentally for the symposium coming up in a few days. But there is still so much indeterminacy that I will really have to improvise, and simply go with the available and auspicious energies of the moment. Many stories are already told about energy and informatics.

Towards sunset, an impromptu picnic on river turns out to be a neighborhood gathering, yet another example of a relaxed bunch of folks. Such a (WELCOME!) contrast to Sydney!

posted
  • place: Millers Point, NSW, Australia

Statement of Multi-Cultural Experience and Practice

With 20 years of experience with students from more than 40 countries and with educational organizations in 25 countries, I have a deep appreciation of the issues involved in multi- or trans-cultural education. My own practice as an educator looks at multi-cultural learning from both a pragmatic and a positive point of view. Pragmatically, for example, all of my classes in the past years are composed of students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. This simple fact brings to the fore in every situation the difficulties of language, and the cultural expressions that are deeply formed by language. Most often working under second-language conditions, I have honed my sensitivities to the relative speeds of comprehension and expression that second-language imposes and to the contingencies of difference that surface. Because difference is such a core creative source, I make it a practice in my workshops that students engage each other so as to open the potential pathways for creative collaboration.

It is tremendously important that a learning/creative situation is relevant to each particular student and that they feel comfortable enough to evolve and take on an experience that reflects a personal, internal source. Teaching in up to 20 different linguistic and cultural situations each year I have developed an appreciation for what is possible, what each distinct viewpoint opens up in a collective learning experience, and how personally relevant work may be seen as an inspiring source for peers. This kind of movement through radically different domains requires me to have a flexibility to engage and facilitate under widely varying conditions. While this is a constant challenge, it is one that I seek out for its richness, liveliness, and the consequential open space that arises when learners, myself included, are faced with the unknown — both inside the Self and inside the Other that they face. Because a fundamental concept of my creative work as well as my seminars and workshops is the facilitation of distributed (that is, non-hierarchic) network systems, I specifically deal with this human-to-human dynamic both in the conceptual/theoretical content as well as the lived practices that I stimulate in the classroom.

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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”

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Migrating: Art: Academies: done

MigAA book cover (pdf download)

After eight weeks of intensive effort, sometimes re-writing almost from scratch a wide range of (English-second-language) articles, essays, and academic papers, the second and final book from the MigAA project is done and at the printers. Bravo to the Alfa60 designers, Joseph and Lina in Vilnius — perhaps this book will win awards like the last one did! And big kudos to El Jefe, miga, without whom, none of this would have come to pass, none of it!

This is the jacket blurb I wrote in ten minutes — the day Lina was sending the book to the printers! more “Migrating: Art: Academies: done”

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The End of the Road and The Onset of Dreaming

roadside memorial, near Bitter Springs, Arizona, USA, March 2010
ed: This short note is the epilogue for the Migrating:Art:Academies: book. Because of the heavy-duty editorial tasks, I otherwise didn’t have time to write something more comprehensive on the ideas surrounding movement and learning, maybe next time!

We suspect that even though travel in the modern world seems to have been taken over by the Commodity — even though the networks of convivial reciprocity seem to have vanished from the map — even though tourism seems to have triumphed — even so — we continue to suspect that other pathways still persist, other tracks, unofficial, not noted on the map, perhaps even secret pathways still linked to the possibility of an economy of the Gift, smugglers’ routes for free spirits, known only to the geomantic guerrillas of the art of travel. — Hakim Bey, Overcoming Tourism

This volume Migrating:Art:Academies: represents yet another step on the (linguistic) migration from nation to nation, academy to academy, culture to culture, friend to friend, order to order, life through life. As with the first volume, Migrating Realities, any impossible contortions of English are this editor’s responsibility, and given the time constraints for this latest MigAA tome, there are sure to be some short-comings. But then, of all the movements within the social, language migrates the most of all. It is never static. Nor should it be, especially as it accompanies the learning process — a process which is essentially about encountering and naming that which is not (yet) known. more “The End of the Road and The Onset of Dreaming”

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  • place: Berlin, Germany

Migrating:Art:Academies: done

Migrating Realities (pdf download)

Migrating:Art:Academies:
ISBN 978-9955-854-91-3

This MigAA volume, titled Migrating:Art:Academies: invites the reader to construct their own opinion on the efficacy of the project as a field for learning and creative action. The book provides a link between the virtual school and the mobile school; it also functions as an anchor point for future research projects, and as an aesthetic package for the available documentary material. The projects introduced in the book — whether a drawing, a map, photographs, or a text — were delivered by the authors themselves, edited and assembled together with an eye on readability from multiple perspectives. The book is divided into three sections: Migrating:, Art:, and Academies:. Following these is a compendium of contributor’s biographies and finally, included with the book is a postcard containing a keyword index, the use of which is described below.

In the Migrating: section the reader will get an idea how the actual project participants worked and created while on the road and what their relation was to the general MigAA theme of migration. Personal interpretations, ideas, sketches, notions, and notes form a fertile first-draft of an ongoing process of artistic expression. Some of those impressions are included in this section along with photos, maps, and interviews.

The Art: section documents numerous art works — both conceptual and actual — along with related actions realized by MigAA participants during the laboratory deployments. The syntactically divergent projects vary from drawings to performances and installations to computer software packages and are here grouped by thematic or formal aspect.

The Academies: section contains more in-depth papers, articles, essays, and research documentations that were presented at some point during the project, or will be presented at the final conference in Berlin. Texts range from historical research, analysis of migration, to artistic and academic research presentations.

Around sixty keywords, key phrases, and key images were compiled and subsequently linked graphically across all three sections. An index deployed on the accompanying postcard offers a simple navigational beacon to follow throughout the book. The editors suggest following the red lines for objective keys and the blue lines for subjective keys. The awareness of subjective and objective functions of such indexing gives reason for further debate on what this specific book is about or what a printed book is about in general, as it is a mobile (and thus migrating) interface for ideas.

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assessments

And so, encroaching on the last major procedural hurdle before the doctorate goes to the external examiners (next year sometime). The panel assessment seems to be routine and bureaucratic. Public speaking in compressed time frames is no fun. When there’s always too much to get across in the extremely limited time frame, and the highly institutionalized context allows for negligible true dialogue. In some ways, the process is a deeply laughable (chortle?) imitation of what it claims to be, or what it once perhaps was. That is, learning as a process of open and sustained dialogue between two or more humans. Facing the unknown that each other presents, or both facing the unknown of what is, or what is out there. Contemporary ‘education’ is a thin and watery drool coming from somewhere up above — meager remains of what’s left of a blasting monsoon of shared life that brings one to a deeply profound awareness of that-which-is. Instead we squelch around in evaporating puddles of shared encounter, wishing for more rain, and complaining about the weather.

Tomorrow, it happens. We shall see. No brolly, no Wellies…

So, over this hurdle, and maybe the final work commences, perhaps finishing earlier than scheduled, or at least that inspiring outcome is a concept on the radar.

Meanwhile, surviving week-to-week, in part through the acupuncture and massage treatments from Heiji Cho and some of the Chinese Traditional Medicine (CTM) students here at UTS. The gall bladder channel is the one being worked — to release rising yang from the liver. hmmm. The treatments work, they seems to diffuse the migraines that do show up and eventually, as is common, with any lock, the migraines will vanish. I am confident of this, and only wish I had come to this conclusion last year, or even earlier as these episodes interrupted life from time to time. The stress of movement came on such a regular basis, but there was no thought to find a source, find a working solution, a cure. It was only the process of gritting the teeth until a dark and quiet room could be found for the duration. Western meds never really worked, they only covered the symptoms at best, and in some cases a single pill cost as much as a full 90-minute acupuncture treatment session.

But choosing to undertake a treatment of what is known as ‘alternative’ medicine was always a difficult stretch. Despite input from trusted others who had benefited. There was the hardship of paying cash from the pocket to the practitioner when cash was never so abundant.

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  • place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

end of the road

Start to try making time-lapse sequences from the immediate surroundings. Lousy and/or old equipment, a quasi-functioning power system, and the results show it. Add a portable generator, a better tripod, longer cabling, a 3-CCD camera with chip memory (ah to be free of tape!), and a laptop with a battery that lasts longer than the start-up sequence. I’m ready to cash in some of my retirement piddle to cover it. Maybe $10K I could get away with all of it, including a decent audio recorder? That, along with a better 4WD truck and I’d be part of the pseudo-elite for once. hah. So, anyway, now, marooned in Echo Park by the intense weather, (I was warned, fair enough, but I told the ranger that I wasn’t planning to come out until Friday next at least, anyway, so things should dry up by then, and that I had enough supplies for at least two weeks if not more). Stormy already today, late morning, humidity pulled the clouds up, and while attempting some decent time-lapses, it gets worse. What else is new? Maybe I end up sitting in the car just writing. There are rain filaments across to the north.

Cutting tamarisk growth behind camping site (#7) to feed the fire. Keeps mind busy, with flinging sharp blade biting into hard wood. No help around in case of an accident. This sharpens the wits. more “end of the road”

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  • place: Wendover, Utah

CLUI: Day Nineteen — SWAT

SWAT exercises, Wendover Air Base, Wendover, Utah, April 2010

Today, upon waking, there are two buses parked to the west of the hangar, a bit later, numerous SUV’s begin to pull up along with several official SWAT command vehicles and their teams from Winnemucca, Elko, and Wendover. It’s SWAT play. How to deal with a bus-load of terrorists/hostages or so. Several squads are lectured and engage in practice drills for the morning. I had originally been told by the airport management folks that there were going to be live-fire exercises at South Base, so we were surprised when this began to unfold in the back yard.

There is the fascination of playing Army, recalled from early days in the Maryland woods beyond the pond, beyond the corn fields, into unknown territories of abandoned farmhouses and hunting camps. Learning to make the sound of a gun and of explosions. And here, older boys, men, with very fancy toys, playing for their lives and the lives of their charges. Learning to stay alive, to save life. Learning to kill, or be killed. Learning to protect the innocent and kill the profane.

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routed, rooted

If everything now becomes about the Road: it all falls along that infinitely converging line, that pavement rising to the foot, hard, on occasion scraping the nose, the knees, or the palms; it is both that which is down-trodden, and the means to get there. A path for social flows, climbing, gathering, consuming, dispersing. Freedom, indeterminacy, hydrocarbon wastage, imperial protocols, signage, regulation, safety, danger, possibility, newness. On the road, carrying the old with oneSelf, in a worn knapsack, that which is old, known, important, very important.

So, three or four threads: 1) the Self on the road; 2) the encounter with the Other on the road; 3) the road as an expression of the techno-social context for human relation; 4) what to do on the road that cannot be done elsewhere or under other conditions — what the road proffers to life, how one gets there, that and imagining the end of the road (Oz! to meet the Wizard (or Sorceress) hehe, from the Yellowbrick Road to Oz, now ain’t that whacked!).

In that moment I was able, so to speak, to place myself in a future which may one day be realized. I saw not only what I might one day be able to do, but also I saw this — that the anticipation of the event was an augur of the deed itself. Suddenly I realized how it had been with the struggle to express myself in writing. I saw back to the period when I had the most intense, exalted visions of words written and spoken, but in fact could only mutter brokenly. Today I see that my steadfast desire was alone responsible for whatever progress or mastery I have made. The reality is always there, and it is preceded by vision. And if one keeps looking steadily the vision crystallizes into fact or deed. There is no escaping it. It doesn’t matter what route one travels — every route brings you eventually to the goal. “All roads lead to Heaven,” is the Chinese proverb. If one accepted that fully, one would get there so much more quickly. One should not be worrying about the degree of “success” obtained by each and every effort, but only concentrate on maintaining the vision, keeping it pure and steady. The rest is sleight-of-hand work in the dark, a genuine automatic process, no less somnambulistic because accompanied by pains and aches. — Henry Miller, “To Paint is to Love Again”

Writing on the road. The translation of movement and sensual input to text. Learning what filters to apply, what social protocols to apply, what protocols to transcend, what to hold, what to release. Discipline.

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technology fails

20100116 The latch handles on both the driver- and passenger-side door are broken. There is a certain geometry on the plastic lever-arm which, over time of repeated lifting motions, fails. So I have to replace them. The truck is relatively old, compared to the average age of vehicles on the road. I call the Toyota dealer nearby, and they want almost USD100 for each replacement handle. This is called an OEM part — Original Equipment Manufactured — a part which carries some of the branded weight of the maker and its record of quality along with a premium price (including a substantial markup to underwrite the existence of the dealer distribution system). Too much! I knew this would be the case before I called, but I wanted to set a ceiling price before looking elsewhere, online. This particular vehicle model was globally a widely-distributed frame, body, and engine combination and so there turns out to be a substantial non-OEM parts market. The only question is one of quality. Non-OEM parts online appear to be both Mainland Chinese- and Taiwanese-made with what seems to be a substantial US distribution presence in the form of highly discounted warehouses designed for online mail-order sales (with Ebay, Amazon, and their own web sales presence). I find the parts, in several styles (chromed plastic and black) for a small fraction of the OEM cost, USD 20 with free shipping. more “technology fails”

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the American Dream is only to survive

David Brooks, columnist at the New York Times writes in this commentary on New Years Day:

Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in — technology, technocracy, centralized government control — have failed them in this instance.

I have always enjoyed his pragmatism and basic awareness of a wider historical context. It frames the American Way as (merely another) expression of a global continuum of human presence on the planet. And he seems largely to avoid the hybridized reli(geo)-political Destiny’s Child(ish) mentality that so pervades the fragmentary remnants of mediated public discourse in this declining nation-state. more “the American Dream is only to survive”

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movement and encounter

Morning, mourning notes on encounter, in no particular order.

It is on a pathway, the pathway, in the mode of movement, in the shifting of unknown situations, where encounter occurs. These encounters are traced with the full presence of the body and all aspects where they occur.

There is the general rule on a hiking trail, uphill gets right-of-way: those struggling and straining to make it to the top of whatever heights that you’ve just been on should be given precedence. It’s always a question, though, what the precise character of the encounter will be. Whether you have seen (or heard) the approach of an Other, through dense forest, or whether you round a turn to be confronted by a gaggle of silent walkers. Encounter is a culturally specific regime overlying that of the embodied, the animal. On trails in the West the density of hikers is generally low, except in National Parks which can see crowds as dense any on Fifth Avenue in New York City at lunch-time. This is one criteria on which to judge a trail — not merely the views afforded, but the number of people encountered. Escaping from human presence is as prominent a thought as what other ‘natural’ phenomena might be encountered. more “movement and encounter”

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  • 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