A Natural History of Sound
At Tom Fleischner’s invite I’ll be doing a public talk this evening as part of the Natural History Institute’s lecture series. Prior to the lecture, I’ll perform a 20-minute live sonic improv [along the lines of this or this]. The day after tomorrow, Saturday, 02 April, I’ll do a full-day workshop.
TITLE: A Natural History of Sound
TIME: 31 March 2016, at the Natural History Institute, 312 Grove Avenue, Prescott College Campus, Prescott, Arizona
7:00 – 8:30 PM (GMT-7 PDT/MST) Prescott, AZ
SHORT DESCRIPTION:
This presentation, opening with a brief (20-minute) live improv sonic performance, will weave a pathway through the nature of sound as an integral feature of bio-systems and human presence on the planet.
LONG DESCRIPTION:
Sound is a particular expression of energy that is present within the living global system. The movement of sonic energy is a crucial feature of life for many organisms, humans no less than others.
This presentation will begin with a live improvisational performance arising out of an on-going sonic/visual/performance art project changing the course of nature that explores the energy dynamics of natural systems and the impact of life on those energized flows. The project plays with the subtle and not-so-subtle influence of human presence on the planet.
The talk following the performance provides a wider context to the project within Hopkins’ trans-disciplinary and nomadic life-trajectory. He will present a number of international creative projects that employ sound as the primary creative medium as well as exploring the concept of sound itself. Of particular interest to Hopkins’ research is a mapping of the intersection of human presence and wider systems. He will also introduce the concept of acoustic ecology.
There will be ample time for dialogue at the conclusion of the presentation.
The performance and talk will be live video-streamed at:
https://livestream.com/prescottcollege/events/4739637
10:00 – 12:00 Midnight (GMT-4 EDT) New York, NY
0400 – 0600 (GMT+2 CEST) Berlin, DE
1:00 – 3:00 PM Friday, 01 April (GMT+11 AEDT) Melbourne, AU
gettin’ ready …
talking about change
Stan’s lectures
Stan starts a lecture on George Méliès thus:
Now let me say it to you—simply as I can: the search for an art . . . . either in the making or the appreciation . . . . is the most terrifying adventure imaginable: it is a search always into unexplored regions; and it threatens the soul with terrible death at every turn; and it exhausts the mind utterly; and it leaves the body moving, moving endlessly through increasingly unfamiliar terrain: there is NO hope of return from the territory discovered by this adventuring; and there is NO hope of rescue from the impasse where such a search may leave one stranded.
Brakhage, S., 1972. The Brakhage lectures: Georges Méliès, David Wark Griffith, Carl Theodore Dreyer, Sergei Eisenstein, Chicago: The GoodLion. Available for free at UbuWeb
I love the drama that was always wrapped up in a straight up sense of the absurd of what he was saying despite it being something of a truth — I can just hear his voice, and now can really regret that I never recorded any of his classes or our conversations back when (my spacious graduate-student office/studio was next door to his office/studio cubbyhole for a couple years — the very place he made many of his hand-painted films). I still have my class notes, and some of the letters we exchanged after I moved to Iceland. To be such a teacher, unafraid of anything except The Void that he faced down with bold fist-shaking.
Bricolabs panel fragment
matters
Matter is not what it appears to be. Its most obvious property — variously called resistance to motion, inertia, or mass — can be understood more deeply in completely different terms. The mass of ordinary matter is the embodied energy of more basic building blocks, themselves lacking mass. Nor is space what it appears to be. What appears to our eyes as empty space is revealed to our minds as a complex medium full of spontaneous activity. — Frank Wilczek
Sometimes I get the feeling that I don’t recognize even my own life. Among the array of phenomena which present themselves for the sensual body-system every … second … recognition shouldn’t be necessary for any one of them, given that change is the governing principle, or so. All should be new every time, all the time(s), and thus recognizable whether or not there are any observable and (relatively) invariant* features. It could be that this lack of recognition is itself merely the reliance on external models or comprehensions of ‘what’s out there’ as opposed to a deeper reliance on what is experienced by the Self as being (relatively) invariant. more “matters”
physics lecture
Trail Draw and Upper Pool Creek Canyon
An Outward Bound group rafts in, and are lectured to in the Trex seating arranged for “camp fire talks” here in the campground. I find it really bizarre, when there a thousand ‘natural’ places to sit for a dialogue, they make a bee-line to the plastic composite seats. I guess they got lectured on the tamarisk mitigation work around Echo Park, I didn’t ask, as I was too busy prepping for the day. They later went into the woods between the campground and the river and were doing something. Wonder if they saw the carnage I wrought on the tamarisk behind site #7! more “Trail Draw and Upper Pool Creek Canyon”
CLUI: Day Nineteen — SWAT
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.
empathy (smoke and mirrors)
John Vallee, 54, lives near the trestle that spans the Crane Creek and was watching TV when he heard a loud screech. He went outside and first thought he saw a blanket tangled under a rail car. Then he realized it was a person.
“It’s going to be hard for me to get to sleep,” Mr. Vallee told Florida Today. “I can’t get it out of my mind.” — AP
The energized impression and apprehension of be-ing leaves us with resonant formations in embodied memory. And it is resonance that best circumscribes (models) the phenomena of the propagation of empathy from the Other to the Self. Although there is no hard evidence in humans, the concept of mirror neurons would seem to support the idea of resonance. Caught a lecture at UM with Deb on “Empathy in Normal Adult Development and Neurological Disease” with Bob Levenson from UCB which got me thinking of the actual mechanism that allows for the transmission of the energies of expression across Cartesian space from the Self to the Other. The obvious model would be the transmission of band-limited radiative (visual, auditory, touch, etc) energy which then is apprehended by the neural system, a system which is sensitive to ‘matched’ or similar experiences that have already impinged and impressed themselves on the body system. This impression process changes the body system from one energy configuration to another. And any life system will have fundamental resonant pathways — these would be necessary determinants of basic learned experience — whatever the particular and precise mechanism is (mirror neurons being perhaps a primary model), the idea of resonance seems to be key. Resonance would depend on some accounting of sameness and difference as per prior embodied experience and the persistence of impressions (which themselves are configurations of energized neuronal structures: memory) among other factors. There would have to be a means for rapid energy pattern-matching across a huge volume of semi-fixed memory structures in the brain — it would be impossible to check all possible prior impressions with all live incoming impressions, so there would have to be some kind of disgressionary or limiting function to the process in the form of step or directional filters…
I can’t get you out of my mind…
Ways of Listening
tools to thrive
spend the afternoon at a meeting with a group of about 15 enthusiastic Mizzou students who are interested in fundamental issues around sustainability and social activism. the meeting (Open Sustainability Network Mid-Missouri, under the title Tools to Thrive. hosted by Richard Schulte, one of the founders of the Mid-Missouri group (which is connected to the umbrella Open Sustainability Network). OSN-MM is also the initiator of the Columbia Missouri Exchange Circle. Lonny Grafman, the featured presenter, is a lecturer at Humboldt State University and is the founder of Appropedia Foundation, the self-proclaimed sustainability wiki which provides a public platform for information on sustainable community practices along with pertinent knowledge-sets for implementation. Lonny is also the Executive Editor of International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering (IJSLE). He introduced some of his work in the form of a presentation Democracy Unlimited Humboldt County Rainwater: A Case Study in Open Source Community Action for Sustainability which explored community activism in deployment of sustainable (in this case, domestic rainwater gathering) systems. words: creation of human networks … the search for a deliverable … starts with a sonic ambient exploration a rainstorm … examples of rainwater sequestering … Bechtel in Bolivia … anthropocentric impurities … a lesson in rainwater catchments: free … local infrastructures generate independence / autonomy. Too many details at first. without the principles of appropriate technology use — public perception, policy situation, know-how, resources, initiative, currency in Humboldt … hemp paper, soy inks … Temporary Autonomous Zone break-out groups: creation and organization of more and better public art; bike-powered something; CSPAN (Columbia Sustainability Policy Action Network); local economy (in general); moving from thought to action; facilitating dialogue; sustainable creative activism; expanding the sustainability community; empathy and interconnectedness; rooftop gardens where possible on campus; community networking club celebrations, gardening; organizing / participating in one implementation workshop for a physically appropriate technology setup; less plastic use, healthy local food, teaching sustainability to children … sorry no more detailed notes, I had to leave right after the break-out sessions to meet Nick and Deb to look at houses. I cycle across downtown from campus to the Walgreens where I lock the bike and go in to buy a snack. when I come out I wander across the parking lot looking for Deb’s car. a chubby white woman gets out of a sedan and asks me if I need a ride. she says she normally doesn’t do that, but I looked like I wasn’t a killer and that she’d be happy to help me out. I say no, no thanks, I’m just waiting for friends to pick me up. mid-western courtesy? I’m wearing a black leather biker’s jacket, black jeans, black half-gloves and a baseball cap from Germany, and dark brown sunglasses. who’s she kidding? she must have been one of those mild-mannered mid-western serial killers. just then Deb pulls up. saved! Nick stayed with the kids, so we drive into the countryside to some small towns looking at houses. the area is really depressed, many empty storefronts on Main Street. and this area is relatively affluent compared to much of the rest of the state. it would be very interesting to travel through these areas and document what is happening. sustainability? indeed. things are not sustained here. help is needed.
Lonny’s sustainability rap
Saturnalia
Nick, Kieran and I attend a marginal lecture about Saturn delivered by a nervous and not well-versed graduate student (kept in line by his adviser, Dr. Angela Speck and distracted by Angela’s son writing his name upside-down and backwards on the chalk-board). it is followed by a visit to the observatory enclosing a 16-inch telescope at the top of the physics/astronomy building on the UM campus to see Saturn. there were some folks from the Central Missouri Astronomical Association running the ‘scope. I recall an evening spent with Loki and Annie at the CU observatory doing the same. Light pollution is not so bad given we are in the middle of Columbia at an altitude of 740 feet, but the facilities management forgot to turn off the stadium Lights as agreed upon. collegiate sports 1, astronomy 0. Saturn was visible with the rings at the minimal inclination of less than a degree — not to be seen again until 2038.
Saturn lecture
Mark Hosler, negativland
seminar on re-creation
COFA lecture fragment
panel & placard
Day two. Elénore catches her plane from Strasbourg, but gets tangled in security at Charles de Gaulle, missing her Helsinki flight and so I am left with a two-hour morning conference panel to anchor solo at the Goethe institute. Presenting the context of the workshop and the paper that I contributed to the Pixelache publication. It goes well. Although there are skeptics in the back row. Not vocal, but disturbing the atmosphere by talking during much of the talk/discussion. They make no direct critique of the propositions nor contribute to the lively discussion. Boring people who do that.
(01:52:28, stereo audio, 215 mb)
At another point, a bit later, someone who was to show up at placard in Kiasma isn’t able to come, so, with a little chunk of open time in my schedule I jump into the corner hot-seat and do a one-hour impromptu mix for a handful of headphone-donning folks. The sun streaming in the window, I have a good view of the Parliament building as a source of rock-solid and cubic inspiration.
Erik (aka Mr. Placard) runs the multichannel headphone mixers, the stream, and keeps an eye on the irc channel.
Then, there’s Manu & Mukul along with Indigo, their young boy. Hanging around waiting for the screening of their film Faceless in the Kiasma Theater.
rubber stamping
time stuffed with logistical and administrative duties, fielding queries about the workshop, hunting train schedules, job applications, lecture notes, articles to finish, travel food shopping, and the list goes on!
I wanted to go to Bremen before leaving Hamburg, but the Light is so frightful, and the constitution of the gallery there now so doubtful (I mean what pictures have they left hanging), and my apathy so enormous, that I have not made the trip. — Samuel Beckett
or did I?
V2
tuning in to Lev Manovich‘s lecture/discussion at V2. last time I saw Lev was at my flat in Helsinki in 2000, I made dinner for him, Tapio, and Susanna. His topic is “scale effects.” Stephen Kovats, a curator at V2, sent an email invitation to myself and a handful of other folks who frequently participate in such live/online events. it is a non-standard way to participate, for sure, watching and hearing the event via an audio/video stream, and reacting to that via an IRC channel that is projected into the lecture space. there is much more that one could do to push this format for live interaction, but it usually ends up being rather mundane and polite.
sotto voce: after self data-mining. computers scaling social forms. (dialectic between increasing quantity, size, creates new effects. examples Wikipedia. scaling in visual culture. one million hours of programming online. (BBC?) company in San Diego makes 6 giga-pixel images. (factors — image size, data volume, podcasting, moblogs) Bruce Sterling, the future. ubiquitous computing. media ecology. listing newest, hippest pop technologies. What about the societies in which this technological consumerism takes place in? medical imaging – PET, MRI, CT. graphical browsers took off. 30-40 years of media history. What about the impact of scaling up of existing media? What is tradition of quantitative effect scaling. very much based on a Cartesian system. Mcluhan’s suggestion that increasing of speed changes the social system. With scale being a parameter for comparison of media implementations. Speed: processing speed relating to visual presentation. algorithm already developed in Durer’s time. so, scaling causes the development of a “whole new media”… new visualizations important to contemporary science. resolution yardstick. but the available visual cortex (field of vision) can cover a small fragment of the image at any one time. redefining new media. normal media flattens the world, then surveillance. 4k digital Cinema. adam says it’s all smoke and mirrors. I think it seems to be using conventional metrics — based in Cartesian worldviews? temporal, spatial, compression. the collective. “as much data as we want.”
the parallel irc discussion (see below) leaves much space for wondering at Lev’s success. there seems a close linkage between text production and influence, something I have mentioned many times in other places. he made careful note that he is working on two new books and is proceeding at a rate of 2500 words a day. seems linear, quantitative, and retro. hmmmm. but it works within the attention economy.
Silurian dreams
Decided last night not to tell the students when to arrive for morning start-up for the workshop, so they are up until 0300 or so, keeping me in uneasy slumber, Marcus as well, who ended up staying over in the dorms as well. So they are nowhere in sight in the morning. After a hearty oatmeal breakfast which Marcus says is the highLight of his impromptu visit to Beroun so far, we wander out into the landscape to shoot some, ending up on a intrusive gabbro sill, standing high above the railroad station. Later in the morning, all but two of the students leave for Prague, and in the afternoon, Milos comes back from Prague for a meeting with students of the Technical University who are working on some media projects. It is disappointing that this workshop imploded. But I think it is due to the extreme fragmentation and lack of focused attention in the first two days. What to do with students who cannot focus and instead want to party? A long walk might have been the answer, to keep them physically going — that might have helped to get them to sleep as well!
In the late afternoon Dr. Cílek, the Director of the Academy of Sciences Institute of Geology pays us a visit and delivers a fascinating talk that wove the human historical, mystical, and mythological elements of the Bohemian Karst region around Beroun with the underlying geology and speleology. We were supposed to go on a day-trip with him tomorrow, but Milos had to cancel it because of a lack of interest of the students: a real shame.
(00:36:32, stereo audio, 70.1 mb)
It was a delight to meet someone from a geological pursuit who also shared a profound interest in phenomenal life and be-ing with a clear trans-disciplinary role to re-form traditional thinking models. I would hope for another opportunity to make a tour with him. Googling Silurian Devonian Beroun karst trilobite tells much about the potentials! Especially the French-Czech paleontologist Joachim Barrande who generated a yet-unparalleled series of comparative studies under the title “The Silurian System of the Center of Bohemia.”
All told, the complete “Systême silurien du centre de la Bohême,” published between the years 1852-1911, consists of eight volumes in 29 tomes in quarto, 8224 pages of text and 1606 lithographic plates. It contains descriptions and figures of 4565 species, with a few exceptions all coming from the Lower Paleozoic marine beds of Bohemia.
Late dinner with Milos, Boyana, and Victor at the pizzeria, after visiting a photo exhibition installed in the Lower (Prague) Gate tower of the Beroun city fortifications. A view over what once was a drawbridge. it is too damn cold for walking around.
modest needs lavishly met
the national teacher’s union has gone on strike, closing all elementary and middle schools in the entire country. clearly recall, in the months preceding my ‘official’ departure from this country in 1995, there was a 6-week long strike of all teachers across the country including we who were working at what is now the National Academy. the only thing that the Prime Minister had to say was that he was happy that the government was saving so much money in with-held pay for the teachers. millions a day. yippee! in some quarters he’s called “little Hitler” for his stature and his contemptuous and power-mongering behavior. I’m not really following the politic so much while I am here, too many other things to deal with. but it seems this is a another surfacing of what I considered a very backward attitude about education in Iceland generally. already the system is weighed down by the Scandic/Lutheran socialist mentality that everyone should be the same, so that students with a special talents, skills, and interests are in no way encouraged to develop those areas, rather they are discouraged into conforming with the average. successful and talented people more often than not leave the country — this in contrast to the general US situation of regimented hyper-competition which is equally warping.
still pondering the text about Robert Irwin, whose guest-lecture I missed, out of busy-ness, when I was teaching at CU in 2003. had I been more familiar with his work I would have definitely been there. happened on a copy of Lawrence Weschler’s book on Irwin, “Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees” sitting on a shelf at the residency flat.
equinox, but no balance here.
self-portrait at RAM6
ram 6.2
first day of the actual workshop comes and goes. as is always the case, the energy of the situation varies. changes. while the Lithuanian basketball team plays China, Gedimas introduces Geert Lovink for a lecture. the topic, “Critical Internet Culture: Internet Government and Civil Society.” a mapping of the geo-politic of the Internet.
the next solar cycle
spent much of yesterday online, remote. talking with the https://archive.reboot.fm crew during their collaborative re-streaming project from Berlin. Thomax from the old orang.orang radiostadt project was there as irc host, and many net-amigos dropped in during the course of the 12-hour stream. by day’s end. though, I was wondering about the effect of a full day online, again. the price you pay’s a very general and deep issue regarding technological implementations, technological consumptions, technological deployments anywhere, anytime, anyhow. the cost (in life-time and life-energy) that is extracted from the individual and collective psyche is always there, this is a principle. as soon as one begins to make a re-configuring of the natural conditions of flow, that re-configuration itself, because at least part of it is contrary to the flow, costs in that the self has to expend internal energies, or, to get Others to do the same. huge discussion to try to launch into here, now. part of that greater schema that I have been promoting on a granular lever in teaching.
more “the next solar cycle”Convergent Practice: Networking and Creativity
8th Annual Teaching with Technology Conference — Final Program:
Convergent Practice: Networking and Creativity. John Hopkins, CU-Boulder — Room 1B90
The focus of this presentation is on the convergence of digital/network technology and the arts, and the opportunities for collaborating with a global network of artists. This presentation includes an overview of several specific digital arts projects in Europe and the United States and commentary about the practice behind teaching and creative artwork. (https://neoscenes.net)
…
TWT Talk notes:
“teaching is an action, a practice that embodies art as a way-of-doing: a life praxis. in a matrix of social structures it formalizes the path of movement of energies between two people, the teacher and the student. at the same moment of this formalization, equal energies must reverse the implied hierarchy of this polarization and exchange the roles of the participants: the forces applied by the social matrix re-configured or simply discarded. the two collect the sum total of their knowing, rooted in their sensual awarenesses, and bring it to the forefront of relation. the harmonic flow, the oscillation, thus initiated must hold as its frequency the organic synchronicity of the two individuals and the existence of formal structure must dissipate into a Presence of genuine dialogue.”
background
did undergrad work in geophysical engineering at CSM, worked as an international explorationist for a major, quit to collect an MFA from CU in Photo and Electonic Media, then left the US in 1989 to live and work in a variety of places from Iceland to most countries around the Baltic Rim in Northern Europe running seminars at 15-20 universities each year under the title networking and creativity. here at CU as a sabbatical replacement, but about to return to Europe. more “Convergent Practice: Networking and Creativity”
missing things
already leaving after a very short visit with Aunt Mary and Janet. a nice break. back to this temporary base in Boulder for the next 6 months. surely find that travel is more difficult with this long hiatus. a hiatus that is longer with fewer miles, fewer kilometers than almost ever previously in life. and nothing to say here about the no-see-ums, the retirement community of Shell Point, the sun, the clouds, storms, rain, vegetation, birds, stores. no travel documentation or review. no engagement?
Loki at least gets into it, though I affect his enjoyment with my reserve.
clear that a full-bodied text is necessary. one that posits and shares my worldview, a transcript of lectures made, fleshed out with further commentary, reflected, filtered, and packaging the energy that is danced around. it needs to be generated, but how to make that text when I don’t want it to be linked directly to the generations of previous texts. it needs to spring from direct experience. how?
and what to make the armature? academic discourse, performative speaking, hypertextual juggling? conversation? dialogue? the dialogue technique doesn’t seem to address the social volume necessary. and volume is what I need now to maintain social viability. speaking to many rather than one or two. though it is against the principle of the teaching. still don’t have a good feel for mapping this extended social space of praxis.
Hotel Tequendama
long since I have had time and concentration to write anything here — the flip-side of travel — immobility, and parenting. realizing that the daily chore list with about 20 items, from taking out the garbage to watering the little cactus plant he has, needs not to be rewarded with cash: the almighty allowance needs a total rebuild as a concept. the rewards need to be time with Loki. focused time playing with him — and not homework time, either. putting the full attention of love on him. he’s in need of that. I see the diffidence that he is learning, and it’s not good. and when doing activities, focus on his situation, rather than a focus on the activity (frisbee as a good example) … while the focused sessions have made him a very good frisbee player, he doesn’t enjoy it as much as he could … he often tries to make it more fun, but I’m just too serious. Lighten up! what can I say, initiating lectures at the university about Light, life, energy, and creativity. bring it on home!
considering that 12 December came and went, not note-worthy. one year since I’ve been on a plane, following the previous year where I was on around 100 separate plane flights. strange immobility, yet with a T1 line running into the living room, I am more active internationally than ever. projecting presence at variety of people. scattered across the globe.
At least 15 people have been injured in a bomb blast at a hotel in the Colombian capital, Bogota. The blast occurred in a restaurant on the 30th floor of Hotel Tequendama, which is owned by the Colombian military, officials said. — BBC World Service
brings to deep mind the inscrutable events that were wrapped around me in that very hotel, 18 years ago. less inscrutable with this brief news report. makes total sense. working for UnoCal, of course we would have to stay in a hotel run by the Colombian military. strange things happened to me in that place. not to mention out in the Llanos, the plains to the east of the Sierra uplift. Fuera Yanquis!!
Carillion article
for the record, as the university (of Colorado) no longer publishes nor maintains the archive of this magazine, this is the text of an article done by a CU J-School graduate student, Nicole Gordon.
Visiting artist John Hopkins explores relationship between art and technology
After twelve years of living and lecturing in Europe, digital artist John Hopkins is back in the United States. He’s no stranger to the University of Colorado at Boulder; in fact, he earned his master of fine arts degree from CU-Boulder in 1989. These days, however, Hopkins has returned to campus as a visiting artist rather than a student.
“I’ve always had a deep connection to the physical landscape of the West, and intellectually I find Europe stimulating,” Hopkins said. “I’ve attempted to have both, though in the end, physical location is not always important. What is of primary importance is surrounding oneself with humane and positive people — then anything is possible.”
Hopkins’ interest lies at the intersection of art and technology. He describes his work as “art that is not artifact-oriented, but delves into the unique communicative aspects of global networks.”
“John Hopkins has a long-standing commitment to the art network,” said Jim Johnson, interim chair of the Fine Arts Department. “He brings to the department a dedication to art as an ephemeral human process and his work in the digital community has been a natural outgrowth of that dedication. He has inspired numerous art students to pursue art in the real context of one-to-one communication as opposed to the conventional and isolated production of precious objects.”
Hopkins has been a professional artist since 1985. His career has taken him to Iceland, Finland, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, and Austria as a visiting artist or guest lecturer. His art has been recognized at the prestigious Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria and he has works in numerous private and public collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York City.
At CU-Boulder, Hopkins is teaching introductory and advanced digital art classes, as well as working on individual projects with students and doing international performances.
One of his most recent projects at CU-Boulder, in collaboration with students, is a live, online open-platform happening for creative expression and action called di>fusion. The project, which can be experienced at https://neoscenes.net/projects/difusion1/, simultaneously occupies global network spaces and local physical space with collaborative performance, sonic, music, disc- and video-jockeys, text, poetry-slam, and video events.
“I have done similar projects with students across Europe,” Hopkins said. “And indeed, projects like di>fusion are only partially geographically grounded. Much of the project happens in the space of networks, so there are participants and audiences in many locations.”
Hopkins studied geophysical engineering at the Colorado School of Mines as an undergraduate and worked as a geophysicist before pursuing his art career. He says that art and science aren’t so far apart.
“I worked with electromagnetic fields in geophysics, and I’m basically doing the same in art,” he said.
After receiving his art degree, Hopkins found that the European cultural scene suited his ambitions.
“During the decade of the 90s, while the United States was heavily involved in the dot.com bubble inflation and bursting, there were others in other locations who were looking more critically at technological innovation and the rise of global networks,” he said. “These critical views were often coming out of creative cultural research in Europe.”
Hopkins also noted that funding for arts and culture in Europe is much greater than in the United States.
“There have been many opportunities to get funding for creative projects that could never be realized in the U.S.,” he said. “Scandinavia is generally more advanced than the U.S. in terms of technological implementations society-wide, so naturally there were many interesting things happening on the cultural side related to technology.”
An experienced teacher, Hopkins says that he is committed to the dynamics of the learning environment as a critical and important facet of his work.
“I seek to create vital learning spaces — conceptual and physical zones where the exercise of free expression and spontaneous dialogue take place,” he said.
Examples of Hopkins’ work and more information about him can be accessed on his personal Web site at https://neoscenes.net.
Snorri
networking for survival. looking to rise to the surface. but when it is the Word that still is the over-arching superstructure of the matrix, and it is that very word that is anathema. antithesis. how can it come to be. axe-wielder. Snorri struck down at the thermal pool, from behind, a swift stroke leaving him bleeding into the warm waters, flushing life-water into earth water, mixing Odin’s tears with the sharp stinging excreta of the forge that made Thor’s hammer. all the words on paper did not predict this moment.
the vitality of the country is not linked to the government at all. those who govern do so only of themselves and for other vain matters. the people come and go their ways, and from random collision comes many things. is it different than Europe? there is one mistake that Amurikans make: assuming some kind of homogeneity rules the rest of the world. as there is the media feed. Europe is 350 million anglo white people. bad approximation. it’s slipping by. going it’s own way. as the rest of the world. goes, in circles, in spirals, in the ether between the stars. it’s still there.
but the measure of flows that move us through our be-ing here now cannot be made. if we try to document, we are lost from the moment, not reflecting the brilliance of that revealing of presence in the present.
but is all of this talk, this writing here, these lectures, these speakings, of no value. what-so-ever. oh gee. what then? and anyway, here I cannot write anymore as a travelog. because my motion is only between close-spaced points, and I move by the strength of my own body most of the time. maybe once a week in a car, but otherwise, on a bike. microscopic travels, or maybe mediated travels. there has been a massive increase in email volume. but dislocation has ceased for the time.
post-Imperiality
over and out. there from Sredniy Prospekt 25, near the Metro Vasilevstrovskaya, on Vasilyevsky Island not far from the central campus of St. Petersburg University. the last evening of the lecture. walking around the city this morning, the KunstCamera of Peter the Great. what an individual he was. doing everything, insatiable appetite for life. building material monuments to Empire. now it is post-empire. infrastructure only just barely maintaining the massive and ubiquitous monuments, streets, palaces, museums, and cathedrals. what comes after Empire? is that decay the inevitable result when the inflow of energy sources dries up, when command and control weakens, when chaos descends bit by bit?
circus ends
here now, gone tomorrow. the conference over, people drifting away to their home locations. I think that my ad lib review of the workshop at the closing plenary turned out very well. for once I felt concise, directed, and clear in the process of communicating the background of my concepts and basis of artistic practice in less than 15 minutes. and this with a cross-disciplinary, sophisticated, and eclectic audience. and indeed, the energy available in those concluding remarks was rooted in the process of the three sessions, each of which involved a different group of people from the conference.
net.culture presentation
Good afternoon, my name is John Hopkins, and I will be introducing several projects to you in the context of a course net.culture that I was teaching at Media Lab during the last academic year.
1) I will give you a background for the course,
2) Some of the ideas that drive it and some activities that happened as a result of it
3) Following that I will introduce three on-going projects that were generated in the context of the course, and presentations will be made about each of those. more “net.culture presentation”
University of Art and Design Zürich, CH/ networking and creativity :: Feb.01
Michael Hampel, Marco Ryser, Kurt Kuene, Philipp Oettli, Franziska Kempf, and 10 others.
lunch with Mark
okay, already the system is declining. complete chaos in Hamburg. the Regional Express that Christian takes me down to in Kiel is delayed, stopping in Hamburg-Altona, so I have to race to the S-bahn to take that to the Hauptbahnhof. at first I choose the what I think is the wrong line, with several extra stops, but the most direct line is apparently completely shut down. make it to the station, racing to make the ICE to Berlin, only to find that it, too, is delayed by about 40 minutes. call Mark at the hotel, then race to another track which they announce with three minutes notice. on board the ICE, first class, full of German business types, swirling around and in between. I take an unreserved seat that has a power plug, much to the dismay of some others. settle in for the ride. more “lunch with Mark”
Katrin
still en route. but happen to be joined on this flight by Katrin, a networker from Iceland. we haven’t crossed paths since last January when I dropped in to do a lecture in one of her classes at the Icelandic Academy. we constantly are criss-crossing on similar pathways, but seldom actually SEE each other.
Edifice of LifeStyle
on the second floor landing there is sprayed silver graffiti: “you are everything to me.” a backless school chair on the first floor landing, and two boot-holes kicked into the hallway door on the fifth. moving around the town, slightly here. CNN on the box. piped-in dis-reality.
back to the idea of the Edifice of LifeStyle. from an essay very much under construction.
another lecture finished, everybody returned from last night. pleasant energies. so it goes. the night cools down. Russian teevee channels play bad Amurikan teevee with overdubs that only just barely are louder than the original soundtrack. and sometimes do not even have the right gender speaker. surprising there is so much Amurikan content. and so on.
Technicolor yawns
back in Estonia after a rough catamaran ride across the Baltic. in the open sea, waves were cresting 3-4 meters. not being a seafaring-type-dude, this was a bit intense. most people in the boat were “yawning in Technicolor” as it were … the stewardesses handing out plastic bags constantly. didn’t upset my stomach, but it was disorienting and even caused an occasional white-knuckle grab of the armrests when cresting a wave and going for the trough. the swells were almost broadsides, and although it seemed that the ship had an effective stabilization system, there were a few moments where I was wondering how cold the water was if the need to swim suddenly arose. meet Ivika at the Academy lobby, along with Shawn, a Canadian electro-acoustic musician and Polar Circuiter. the Media Lab here is still undergoing construction, but appears to be a viable organism. my lecture for this evening starts at 1600.
done with one group contact here. the usual eclectic array of intelligent, sentient beings.
Lev’s edifice
Lev was suggesting that the skyscraper was the ultimate (or crucial) symbolic and real social expression of the Industrial Age, and, in the course of his fascinating lecture, pondered what might be the crucial expression of the Information Age. immediately my thoughts went to the concept of LifeStyle as being that edifice — LifeStyle becomes the penultimate expression of the consumer society. this false edifice of success(-full) surrender to a socially mandated norm or behavior. the vapid Look of it all.
and what about creativity — too much attention paid to aspects or results of it — and no observations that is is a continuous, (NOT sporadic) and peak experience. and, at the same time, it is cyclic. and it involves both the creative and destructive principles. it is not a commodity. it is harmonic, balanced from all scalable viewpoints and sensual contacts.
some notes I wrote later:
In this era there are (pseudo)nomads who dance around the monuments of the global information age. These monuments — status, wealth, and power — together combine in a single ever-shape-shifting edifice with no seam, no crack, but with the seductive and bewildering attraction of Joseph’s Technicolor mantle aLight and burning with the fire in Plato’s cave. The edifice is Life-Style. Its ornamentation is Fashion.
more “Lev’s edifice”
Academy lecture
An energized lecture at the Academy. It was the last of a series that Raitis has organized for students there. He tells me that there were many non-students in attendance as well — people that he did not even know. There were many probing and challenging questions and so on. The sun is out before it starts, when I am on the way from the cafe down the street, fortified with espresso energy. It is cloudy when we finally leave the Academy three hours later. So it goes. A quick snack with Raitis, then Rasa and I go to meet the USIS people to present the Media Lab concept to them.
Xavier’s image
hanging at the bus station for a bit, pick up the return ticket to Tallinn for Friday, then going on to the Occupation Museum this afternoon. end up spending several hours there, trying to understand the history of the Nazi and Soviet presence. borders shuffling around, people treated like so many animals. herded around from place to place. with an absolute minimum of care for their survival. pogrom, gulag, concentration camp, resettlement, and the barbarity of the regimes. a little bitterness towards the West, also, with the understanding that the three Baltic Republics weren’t big or important enough for the West to confront the Soviets over. now the issue is how the large Russian minority is to be dealt with. there is a language law coming on the books which declares Latvian as the national language, but I think this will come into something of a conflict with EU directives on minority rights within (potential) member states. the Welsh people, the Sami, and other groups have benefited from the EU mandate to support minority cultures already, so the precedence is not in favor of the Latvians who, by only 4 percentage points, are a majority in their own land. presumably, this will be a major issue, and treated specially within the EU framework. I am staying with friends of Rasa and Raitis, Karl and Kristin, in their roommate, Xavier’s, room. he just left for an extended visit to Mexico, his homeland, Vera Cruz. Karl is Swedish, Kristin is Latvian. on the wall next to the bed is a detailed map of Latvia which I can study abstractly while lying in bed, and hanging over it, obscuring half of it at least, is a big black sombrero with white and silver piping. opposite on the other wall is a big black and white silver print of a woman wearing a swimsuit standing on the sea shore, on a rocky beach, child next to her on hands and feet looking at the ground. the woman is facing the sea. about 10 meters offshore from her, lopsided and partially submerged, is a war bunker with gaping windows and a broken staircase leading down into the water. a man is looking out of the second floor window casing. the woman has her hands on her hips, something of a bouffant hair style from the 50’s and, from a distance, the tone of the swimsuit top makes her look topless. there is no horizon. she is day-dreaming, and that day-dream is my reality. every sensual impression that I have ever experienced she created in the fleeting fraction of a second when that image was made. even when I say to myself (preparing fragments for my public lecture on Thursday): I am a be-ing of energy. it is only because she dreamed it, the energy of her dream has become me. I am that energy. passing through a series of scenarios as disjointed and mute as some dreams can be. giving nothing, taking only the form of the present vessel of place, for the moments of occupation, then immediate, complete dissolution, moving on to the next phase condition. altered state, alter ego. much beyond all that, to the next condition of be-ing. energy-in-motion IS creativity. but how to peg that to the social and cultural conditions of the time. that gap, I cannot bridge with my own abilities at language and the primarily visual tools available to me. which begs the question, what tools would be optimal, what would allow me that full expression of embodied energy? would massive capital of digital power do it? would big photographic prints do it (I have always thought so, thinking that better this or that physical solution would be sufficient to put the whole effort over the edge into electric saturation). joke. making images in silver seemed to be a way of going, but that process, one which I was immersed in for 20 years seems difficult to access lately. it is hidden within the inner topology that has evolved in the last years. hibernating, forgotten. senseless?
next year
public lecture tomorrow. dinner with the class also. meet Jørgen about cafe9.net things. brief talk with Øystein about the possibilities of coming back to teach in the fall, and this seems to be a good possibility. more negotiations are in line, though, as I begin to plot the NEXT academic year of nomadic activities.
oh, Valentines
workshop done. ending on an energized and high note last evening at the Podewil where the TransMediale was taking place. the class attended two lectures there, but were disappointed by both of them, based on the format and styles of presentation. as is common with art/cultural conferences, the standard of presentation was low and lacking much professionalism. believing that when one has an audience of several hundred people, one should respect their time and abilities. preparing materials to be clear and engaging and present. it was clear, again, that the format of conference/festival does not work except at such a surficial level of information-transfer that it is hardly worth it. only dialogue generates enough internal heat within all participants for things to get cooking. as an artist’s work is screened or otherwise shown, in a collective situation, the canon of history is written again and again, based not on the internal potential energy of a work, for the most part, but on the social visibility of the protagonist. Wolfgang tells stories from here and there during the last days. and I wonder that he doesn’t write a book about his life. fascinating abilities of observation. Theresa arrives from Kiel in the afternoon. we are talking when Jimmie Durham calls, they are working on an exhibition with him. I recall being a little astonished during a graduate critique in Boulder when he was there as a visiting artist. he had a bottle of vodka or tequila, I forget which, and drank shot after shot during the session. one installation I see in a recent catalog of his is a refrigerator, an old model, surrounded with cobblestones on the ground in a park. the cobblestones had been thrown with force at the fridge, leaving dents and paint chips.
later, Theresa and I talk a walk around the neighborhood in the chill and damp.
sins
I should not be here, I should be elsewhere, by measure of PLANS. but plans shift and slide, along with the whim of the body presence. missed my flight this morning at 0700 to Prague via Helsinki and Stockholm. first time I have ever missed a flight. anywhere. cost me some bucks, and now I miss the whole cafe9.net meeting in Prague. along with a lecture at the Academy in Brno. and the ensuing reconstruction of schedules and flights makes my head ache. doing too many things, and not enough. nothing and everything. Loki is extremely happy that I am staying another week at least. but I see no solution. Iceland does not work for me. there is no way for me to live here, unless I was fluent with the language. unlike other places where there is enough room in the culture for a foreigner to exist in first language, here not. and I have too many things going on elsewhere anyway. cafe9.net. I hardly mention the internal mechanics of this project. no details, no revelations. though I have never been criticized about revealing anything in these pages, except by Sanna, but that is passé at this point. cafe9.net rumbles on. despite. but lately, since October or so, maybe even last summer, whenever the slip in communications began to happen, the dislocation of immediate being and remote presence, a gap, a slippage, opened up, a dissatisfaction has been growing with THE MEDIUM — the net, and the role, the effect it has had on my situation. in contact with so many people that I can hardly think. several days ago, before the rigidity of my lower back lead to this degraded condition, there was a subterranean urge to meditation, an urge that I did not quite fulfill. each time a discontinuity explodes on linear and insulated life, psyche measures itself against virtual standards. hints of higher being play across media-saturated energy configurations. untouchable. inaccessible. over there. other life-styles seem to creep further away. “what if?” becomes “because that’s the way it is.” damnation. peaceful damnation. mistakes. paying for past errors in judgment, SINS, whatever that means. if a sin is the transgression of the mind against the combined being of the soul and the body. the apokalyptic dream. reflects. what it is to be here and now. like speaking with a mouth full of small round pebbles, black basalt, worn smooth. easy to swallow. hard to talk. and then there is.
black cat
up at 0600, but awoken at 0410 by somebody opening a door in the house, then, an hour later, the black cat — who I met yesterday first on the front steps, then, later, sprawled on the (heated) bathroom floor — jumps in the window. in bed at 0100. then, here at the airport, the plane in canceled, the next one also, and I have to transfer to an SAS flight an hour later. on the way over to Tone’s place for fish soup dinner, I stop to call Hilde, and at the same moment, Sanna calls, multi-tracking. and still the questions of what to do in the spring, after the holidays, causes me tight-chested breathing, and sleep deprivation. this is very unusual for me. so it is something to work with my breathing on, my concentration, my future. more offers to do workshops, this time back in Bergen in the spring. Cafe9 got another boost from this visit, very interesting intersections. for old times’ sake, I wander over to see Johan, who was teaching in the Institute of Photography at the Art and Design school when I was a guest lecturer back in 1992. or was it 1993?
choir of heaven
actually en route much of today, so vegetal states of mind can be left alone to rot away. cosmic radiation — what does it mean to ply the ways of clouds?
All the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind.. So long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit….From what has been said it is evident there is not any other Substance than SPIRIT, or that which perceives.– George Berkeley
notes from the 1830’s or maybe later. intersecting quantum physical conclusions exactly, only dated by language usage. these surprise discoveries fit right into my lead-in lectures on human presence and being in the world.
call-and-response
end of the week almost, more meetings, reverberations to the lecture on Tuesday gives feedback and response, (call-and-response). reaction, and, actions. Jörg Meyer from the Kieler Nachtrichten writes this story:
Der “Intenet-Nomade” John Hopkins in Kiel
Zurück zum Dialog
Wer erwartete, daß sich auf dem Computerbildschirm des Intemet-Künstlers John Hopkins allerlei bewegte und tönende Multimedia tummeln würde, sah sich bei dessen Vortrag über Networking & Creativity am Dienstag in der Muthesius Hochschule getäuscht. Mit dem von Intemet-Puristen treffend als “viel bunt, viel Klick” verballhomten Multimedium, das immer mehr Anbieter in deutsche Wohnzimmer bringen wollen, hat auch Hopkins nichts am Hut. Auf seiner Homepage sieht man nur Fenster mit farbig markierten Texten, die wenige Fotos sparsam illustrieren. “Mit einem modernen Computer kann man auf hohem Niveau Bilder und Töne machen, 3D-Animationen, Filme und all das Zeug”, greint Hopkins. Das sei aber absolut nichts Neues, demi derlei “Artwork” war auch schon vor dem Einzug der Digitaltechnik in das Atelier möglich. Das einzige, was den Computer wirklich interessant mache, sei seine Fähigkeit zu vernetzter Kommunikation.
Der “Netz-Nomade”, wie Hopkins sich selbst bezeichnet, hat gerade ein dreiwöchiges Seminar an der Muthesius Hochschule hinter sich. Darin ging es ihm um “so etwas Simples” wie die Vermittlung von Dialogtechniken. Daß Computer und Netz dabei helfen, ist für ihn einfach nur selbstverständlich. “Wenn ich einen Stift benutze, um einen Brief zu schreiben, oder ein Telefon ans Ohr halte, staunt ja auch keiner über diese tollen Werkzeuge.” Hopkins will das neue Médium entzaubern. DaB dièses als etwas Kompliziertes für hippe Technik-Yuppies dargestellt werde, beruhe lediglich auf der Tatsache, daß Kundige damit Geld verdienen und Herrschaft ausüben wollen: “Nichts fürchten Regierungen so sehr wie den freien und offenen Dialog im Netz.” Deren Verwertungswahn könne man nur entgehen, indem man das Netz als “persönlichen Raum” erobere. So gelange man zurück zur Wurzel aller Kommunikation, dem “genuinen Dialog” zweier Personen, die via Sprache “Energie austauschen”. Hightech wie Video-konferenzen im Netz, aber auch Lowtech wie das einfache Hin-und-her von Email-Texten würden dadurch überhaupt erst (wieder) lebendig. Vom im Internet leider verbreiteten “Broadcast”, dem bloßen Senden ohne Feedback, komme man zurück zu dem, was alle Kunst eigentlich will: Kommunikation und Kontakt zwischen “wirklich fleischlichen” Menschen.
Diesen “Fleischfaktor” will Hopkins in seinem neuesten Projekt “neo-scenes occupation 2” mit den Drähten des Netzes verbinden. Im finnischen Tomio nahe dem Polarkreis werden sich Mitte Juni Internet- und Neue-Medien-Aktivisten ganz leiblich wie auch “telepräsent” versammeln, um Urmenschlichem zu frönen, dem freien Dialog zwischen “persönlichen Räumen”. Im ersten Teil des Projekts, das im letzten Jahr auf der Ars Electronica lief, erfolgte dies über einen mehrtägigen OnIine-Chat. Mitschnitte finden sich noch auf Hopkins’ Laptop: “Aber das lebte nur damals live, jetzt ist das toter Kram.”
post-doldrum
well, actually, things ended up alright. the entire week has been filled with high-energy dialogues covering critical issues. from a bewildering variety of viewpoints. but all energizing. pump-it-up. a relief after last week’s doldrums where I had to suspend lectures in the face of impossible lack of continuity. okay, so I flexed enough, though it always takes such an effort to alter expectations. cooler outside, prepping me for the north-lands in a few days. complications with the housing here forces me to relocate for two nights before leaving for Amsterdam on Sunday. probably head to Hannes’ place, he has been so generous, loaning me his bike for the whole time. makes a total difference in living styles — wheels versus hooves.