posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

going to the mat

It’s difficult to write these days. Internal monologues are focused on figuring out how to pack up life asap. It’s a bit strange to say that the past four-plus years is the longest I’ve lived in one place continuously since leaving my parents home at 17 y.o. And further, it’s one of the few periods of time that I have had *all* my belongings in one place and (mostly) out of boxes. The majority of my adult life, my stuff has been in a storage unit somewhere—New Jersey, Prescott, Golden, Boulder—or in someone’s garage or so. Uff. Packing the entire archive back up seems absurd as it was hardly accessed in the time it was out of boxes. A useless pile of detritus. Why, why, why subject myself to the ignominy and energy-waste of maintaining something that I’m the only one who has an interest in it?

Now Reading: Absorbing the epic six-volume autobiography, Min Kamp, from Norwegian, Karl Ove Knausgård. At Zander’s recommendation, and then, once I started and realized that I actually was in the same locations at the same times—Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Oslo—as Karl Ove back when I was spending a fair amount of time in Norway in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A compelling read.

Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love. Translated by Don Bartlett. 1st Archipelago books edition. Vol. 2. 6 vols. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 573.

I recently checked in with Julia, my former CGS intern. She’s a Mines (hydrogeology) graduate, who has, wonderfully, found a shared pathway to follow her bliss. She and her boyfriend, Torin, also a Mines alumni, have taken their connection with yoga to a higher level, gaining the necessary credentials for teaching and are planning to go international with that sooner than later. They have also started a YouTube channel—Wellbeing Cafe—already with a huge number of yoga routines and a variety of other material. Very cool to see this transition.

Somewhat disturbing to me, though, is that part of this personal evolution is almost forced to take place within the sphere of social media, especially YouTube, given the oligarchic control that it exerts on any and all users. That and the insertion of ads that cannot be cancelled or avoided—all of them utterly useless and annoying—until the channel receives a minimum number of subscribers (1,000). At that point the channel owners can at least select when the ad is played. Otherwise, one will show up in the middle of a yoga sequence or more often. I was stuck with one that played for ten minutes. Finding an independent pathway to socio-economic viability is challenging for their generation. They could have gone full-engineering and been working in a (potentially) stifling ‘regular’ job with deluxe cash flows. But they are cognizant of the lives of some of their cohort who are extremely unhappy (and unhealthy!), coasting along on that trajectory. Given the wider-scale complexity of what is ‘going on’ in late-stage Empire, best to work at basic life-skills like body-health, psycho-spiritual development, consumption habits, community-building, and look to develop trajectories that are beyond the reach of Empire (if that is possible in this new-ish multi-lateral oligarch-and-authoritarian-driven global power struggle).

Later, I juxtapose those assessments with the swirl of jagged thoughts and impressions that are filling my consciousness: monkey-brain on amphetamines, faugh. Complexity increasing, logarithmic, with age (of Self and Empire), while neuronal synapses are dulled, blank. Is this what life *is*, or what it becomes when attention is shredded by too much stuff? Packing boxes, why hold so tightly to this stuff when it will likely sit in those boxes for a long time. Possibly for the existing life-time! Having is a form of suffocation, burdened by excretions of other lives, but mostly my own. Giving is an exhalation, from the deep belly, giving inspiration to the cosmos.

Venus is high and brilliant in the evening, Saturn much less so in the sunset’s glare, Jupiter, Mars high with the waxing, near full Luna, invisible-but-present Uranus. I regularly take a late night stroll around the property before bed, no matter how cold. Waking the deer snoozing in the openness, their greenish-yellow headLight eyes blazing in my headlamp. First encounter, the eye pairs rise vertically, then, after staring, frozen, as the LED supernova waxes, they bolt to the tree line or across the street to a neighbor’s yard. Occasionally, a tinier pair of eyes, one of several feral cats that are encountered, or, rarely, a fox or skunk. So far no encounters with the large carnivores that do frequent the area: bears and mountain lions. Much of the walk is without the headlamp on, and aside from the always-on brightest-Light-within-several-miles that my neighbor installed a year ago, it’s dark with the brilliant streak of the Milky Way in all its offset-rotational glory.

A 30-minute call with George, I feel rusty, awkward and jumbled. He and I never developed an audio tele-presence connection, given the logistics and expense back when. Our connection was forged across some immersive instances of intense f-2-f interaction. After those formative encounters at Mines and in Santa Monica in the early 1980s, and aside from one more f-2-f in 1989, it’s always been text. Hand-written or typed letters through the post, then email, and these days, texting. I wonder if we will ever cross physical paths again in this incarnation. Doubtful, especially when I remove myself from this nation, and head for another, though there are no guarantees of anything anywhere anymore.

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!

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sans-filtre: politics of the absurd

politics theater of the absurd…

proceeding. into histories. as present/future seem not to supply a place to occupy.

Our acquiescence to the thorough mediation of the world as sensed through our technological devices produces deep strains in the viability of the hegemonic (or democratic!) State. Requisite to civil society is the face-to-face encounter with the Other, where human reason and compassion, and, yes, empathy, are central to ‘knowing’ that Other. (Christian doctrine, anyone?) The level of technological mediation applied to what once was face-to-face encounter has stripped it of the potentials of relation that empathy provides. This loss unravels a crucial thread in the social fabric.

The further reliance on (media)ted feeds for information about the world reduces our ability to make accurate and propitious judgements about what to do next. The fact that these information feeds are now largely reduced to theater, and worse yet, simple life/time -consuming spectacle places us (as a class of self-determining individuals) at profound risk of external control. (That is, when we ‘pay’ attention to them, consume them!) The sensory sophistication of these feeds has the demonstrated capacity to re-form even personally-acquired memory. What are we left with?

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Gamergate

It occurs to me, standing on the extreme periphery of Gamergate, that many of the actors are behaving as though they are in a typical first-person-shooter game: kill the bad ‘guy’. Gaming will change perceptions of unmediated reality and alter the way one interacts with that reality. True, playing a game is part of reality, but the degree of stylization and heavy attenuation of embodied experience creates a stunted relationship between unmediated life and time spent gaming. This cannot but have an effect on relation-with-Other, as any techno-social mediation institutes by its nature a change in the flow pattern between the Self and Other, regardless of the ‘intensity’ of that mediation. And with tens of millions of people heavily invested, immersed, and dedicated to this particular mediated form of relation, there is no turning back — that is, until the electricity goes out.

posted
  • place: The Virtual

the Ello trip

ello logo

It’s been on tongues for awhile, and now it’s funneled over to main-lining media. Ello. Owen offers to send me an invite (it’s an exclusive club, and at this point, having reached a popular tipping point, they have had to shut down enrollments several times). It’s a very, very exclusive club: “we are creative technologists, we are agile engineers, we are experts”; One Hundred Thousand have loaded their privacy policy page. Have they read it?

We let you communicate in a modern way, none of the messy surveillance or privacy issues that have sullied those who came before. We, ensemble, we, Legion, are the future. How life is continuously squeezed into a sequence of highly controlled and rigid mediated social spaces that we are forced to enter, to behaviorally adapt to, to express ourselves within a sanctioned way, to build up social capital (no coincidence, that phrase!!) that accrues to the ‘owners’ of the protocols driving the space, and then, like lemmings, to trundle off to the next screen, following the herd.

Books, newspapers, magazines, radio, telephone, television, cameras, tape recorders, VCRs, arpanet, email, scrapbooks, telnet, IRC, UseNet, The Palace, Second Life, AOL, GeoCities, blogs, i-everything, MySpace, FB (sorry, can’t even manage to write the term!), uff.

Is this a critique of pure reason? Or just a tired Luddite rant…

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face-to-face communications

The variable most closely associated with a wide range of positive social feelings was the same variable consistently omitted in studies of media use: time spent in face-to-face communication. Higher levels of face-to-face communication were associated with greater social success, greater feelings of normalcy, more sleep, and fewer friends whom the children’s parents believed were a bad influence. Although we cannot determine causality using this one-wave survey, the results for the clear positive correlates of face-to-face communication and the negative correlates of media multitasking are highly suggestive.

Observations suggest that children and adults are increasingly more willing to use technologies when with other people, such as texting at the dinner table and web surfing while chatting with friends (e.g., Abelson, Ledeen, & Lewis, 2008). Indeed, every category of media use except reading was positively associated with using media while interacting face to face. However, unlike media multitasking, the amount of time spent in face-to-face communication was negatively related to face-to-face multitasking. People who frequently interact with people face to face seem to feel less need to use other media while doing so. This is suggestive evidence that these high face-to-face communicating girls do not want distraction. These results provide more evidence that face-to-face communication and multitasking may attract different profiles of children or may represent participation in different social environments.

Pea, R. et al., 2012. Media use, face-to-face communication, media multitasking, and social well-being among 8- to 12-year-old girls. Developmental Psychology, 48(2), pp.327–336.

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Rules of Storytelling (yikes)

Maybe this is why mega-media animation is SO EFFING BORING! It’s prepared by recipe… Compositional rules of any sort are more than simply annoying, they are counter-creative. Formulaic executions are a great comfort to those expecting normative expressions. But they are the bane on innovation, adaptation, (r)evolution, and anything else pertaining to Life (versus stasis and death). Life does not come with rules, and it does not conclude as a neat package. The process of consuming mediated abstraction simply takes us away from the immediacy and indeterminacy of living.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

screening: Jeanne Liotta

Make a pilgrimage to Longmont to the Firehouse Arts Center to catch an evening screening of work by a CU Film Studies faculty-member Jeanne Liotta. I had met her the evening before at another university-sponsored cultural event. Alex had mentioned there was a reception/opening in the Rare Books Room of the Library, and, as a professional nomadic cultural participant (and observer), I thought I’d check it out. Turns out it was the effort of a Humanities class that had curated a small show of works from the collection of artist’s books that Lucy Lippard had given to the University. Strangely enough two of the pieces in the exhibition are from old friend/networker node, Paul Rutkovsky (aka. floridada). I talked to some of the student curators about Paul, Lucy, and about networking. I was lucky to have been doing my MFA at CU-Boulder when Lucy was in residence and received some of her teachings. Age brings the role of information carrier, holder of historical perspective and knowing, story-teller. No corner on wisdom, but at least some stories are related. I query the kids about what their thinking is about the use of photocopy machines as art tools. This is a very novel idea for them (given they only know the digital type of photocopy machines at most, not the old analog devices). Paper output is novel in itself. I don’t have much documentation online of some of the prior (ancien-régime!) photocopy-based projects I’ve run: just The Xerox Book that included mp3 files of the accompanying collaborative audio cassette mix, unfortunately there are no scans of the 300 actual pages … some day I’ll get to that corner of the archive & revive it in the digital zone.

At any rate, Jeanne’s work dances around cosmology, astronomy, and very much the syntax of the various filmic media she plays with — from Second Life pieces to found footage, analog and digital to Ray-o-gram-printed 35mm film stock. The sonic accompaniments well synergize with the visuals. I missed not seeing some of the analog film pieces in their original form (vs digital reproductions), as most of the pieces are (at least in part) deeply about what mediation they are conveyed upon. (Not that that aspect is meant to completely frame them materialistically: it’s only one order of correlation.) There are plenty of other resonant aspects and sources: the eclipse, the sky, the procession of stellar energies, the transposition of Light from various enigmatic sources onto halating film substrates: she always maintains an alchemical and, consequently, an experimental edge through her attention to immediate and spontaneous situation. This sensitivity is combined with an aware curiosity of phenomenon: yielding Light works that are simultaneously playful and yet connected to/suffused with an insistent and sometimes overwhelming gravity. Escaping the gravitational field of be-ing requires an empathy for the intense sadness that pervades our current times: this potential is achieved on occasion and reminded me of the intent of Bruce Elder’s magnum opus “The Book of All the Dead” and the constant struggle against the gravity of it all, in search of Light. It goes ever back to Simone Weil’s “Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.”

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  • place: Boulder, Colorado

MiT: privacy (and reflecting on presence)

Drop in on Diane’s MiT class this morning in the large ATLS100 lecture room — she’s covering privacy issues. Huge class — I think she’s got more than 100 students enrolled. Quite different than my section of 38.

Surveillance, privacy, monitoring, searching, tracing, 1984, algorithmic filtering and screening of dataspace (face recognition, etc), Mugshots; the students had an assignment to do a name-search on a partner to find out as much as possible. Sitting near the back of the room, a majority of students are paying almost no attention to Diane — instead doing the usual retinue of screen-based tasks — other homework, Facebooking, shopping, and so on. This is disappointing in that it highLights the contemporary situation where even a highly-rated (entertaining!) university teacher is not really engaging the students. In a class of one hundred, filled with mediating screens, what should one expect. Human engagement between teacher and student has been lost in the shuffle of money/power that has become US academia.

Presence is projected out from the Self in a variety of ways — mediated and unmediated, well, always mediated by something: body heat by air (as thermal energy arising from energized interactions, catalyses, and transformations within the body). Presence is more and more being pushed (expressed) into what may be called technological networks. Distributed into more and more finely atomized (digitized!) fragments, and more and more widely distributed in both space and time. Coded, derived, lost in the data-space. When presence is so diffused into that space, we lose what we have here, now. Gone. No chance for an energized encounter when Selves are all pointed away from each other and thoroughly atomized…

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technological mediation

There are different degrees in which our experience of the world is not technologically mediated, at least at the center of our perceptual and bodily experience of that world. For example, even though clothed and inside some “machine for living,” as the functionalists have termed buildings, the normally sighted and hearing person simply hears and sees what is immediate. In contrast, anyone using corrective lenses or a hearing aid clearly has sight and hearing mediated through a technology. At the level of touch, first in a surface dimension, we always can become specifically aware of the bodily surrounding immediacy of what we touch. In short, our sensory life, even if at close range or enclosed, retains that sense of direct perceivability and of bodily motility in the immediate environment. How this bodily actional and perceivable experience differs from more specifically technologically mediated experience will play an essential role in the initial difference I am trying to isolate for this analysis.

Once having located this central core of perceptual, bodily experience of an environment, it is possible to point to both its constancy and its pervasiveness. As long as I experience at all, I do so in bodily perceptual ways, and this is the case inside any technologies I may occupy. In a cold environment, I could tactilely experience the wind and chill; but if I have “chosen” to mediate that cold by wearing down clothing, I now substitute feeling the wind for feeling the warmth of what I am wearing. In this case, the “environment” is simply brought close and itself has the texture of one of the many cocoons humans employ in all non-Garden situations. The technology (clothing), however, transforms this immediately experienced environment; and it is that transformation which must be investigated. Direct bodily-perceptual contact with an environment counts as one side of the non-technologically /technologically mediated human experience that forms the focus of an entry into the analysis of human-technology relations.

Ihde, D., 1990. Technology and the Lifeworld : from garden to earth, Bloomington [etc.]: Indiana University Press.

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doh!

People treat modern communication media as if they were human, so established principles of interpersonal communication also predict human responses to computers and television. The media equation (media = real life) is an unconscious, automatic response that occurs because our slow-to-evolve brains don’t distinguish between mediated and real life experience. — E. M. Griffin

posted
  • place: Bundoora, Victoria, Australia

Models of Reality

Models of reality are generated by every social system and, in essence, are crucial elements of social relation and interaction. The models which people share may be more or less dominant, depending on many dynamic factors within the society. They may also be more or less coherent, and are typically fragmented (Aerts, et al, 2007). Within what are called creative practices there exist impulses which seek to challenge existing models or seek to construct alternate models. It is the latter pathway that I have undertaken to travel along with my creative practice. It is a practice that has enabled me to initiate significant encounters with the world and with numerous Others and to engage in sustained dialogues. These dialogues, as the site of the creative practice, have become, in turn, the field of exploration of this thesis.

These dialogues and especially the life-energy that they comprised of are carried through a “liberatory use” (Bey, 1991) of technological mediation .

Within the intertwined trajectory of dialogic engagement with Others, as explored in both the creative practice and the thesis, I have engaged in evolving a shared worldview from the macro level of a flexible cosmology through to the granular-level of everyday momentary practices. The creative dimension of the PhD accompanying the text is not an illustration of the principles of the worldview, rather it is a tracing of praxis, a site of evolving evidence of the pathway that this particular world-view obliges. It is a recursive demonstration of how that worldview evolves and enables that very practice. In short, the question posed by the thesis is “What is the relationship between individual creative practices and technologically-mediated human encounter in media arts?”

Aerts, D., et al (1994). World Views: From Fragmentation to Integration. Brussels: VUB Press.

Bey, Hakim (1991). The Temporary Autonomous Zone. Available at: https://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont.html [Accessed November 16, 2009].

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: Ultimo, NWS, Australia

(How to Sit) Zazen

It’s a good example of the affect of mediation on socially-generated practices of any sort [this came into mind when I saw a poster advertising a IEEE conference here in Sydney. The posted contained all the recognized and standardized functions of conferences anywhere on any subject. The cocktail evening cruises on the ________ (fill in the blank) river/harbor/lake. The hospitality suites in the _________ (fill in the blank) hotel. The keynotes by famous personages. The plenaries, the break-outs, the posters, workshops, and seminars. yadda, yadda. Don’t people get tired of this endless repetition of heavily coded social protocols?]

The following was downloaded from the UM (University of Minnesota) original Gopher online text retrieval system sometime in the winter of 1991-92. I think it’s the first document (extant) that I downloaded via that new networked document system — the direct precursor of the WWW. Coming around in a very long, very wide circle, from the roots of the digital coming-to-being in the last millennium, breathe deeply:

1. Sit on the forward third of a chair or cushion.
more “(How to Sit) Zazen”

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I and Thou

It is not possible to live in the bare present. Life would be quite consumed if precautions were not taken to subdue the present speedily and thoroughly. But it is possible to live in the bare past, indeed only in it may a life be organized. We only need to fill each moment with experiencing and using, and it ceases to burn. — Martin Buber

Buber, M., 1958. I and Thou, New York, NY: Scribner.

The rumbling classic of coming-to-be in the dynamic of encounter with the Other. Buber’s classic work is dense and difficult. Working through it is slow. It may take a month, or perhaps a year. Sentence by sentence, discovering resonant meaning. While preparing for the doctoral assessment arising in a couple week’s time. Strange to have actually bought a copy of I and Thou there in Portland, along with a new copy of Wilhelm’s I Ching. Nothing to be made of it except that mediated energies from the Other are felt, are compelling, and, in the end, are all we have. But does spirit need this mediation, or, as is framed in many systems, is it a task, a challenge, set to our hungry roving ghosts by something greater, or is it merely the nature of it all, of which we are a substantive part?

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  • place: en route Glade Park - Ouray - Silverton - Durango, Colorado

south-by-southwest

coming off the Glade into the Colorado National Monument, Grand Junction, Colorado, June 2010
the yurt raised, a futon installed, some clean-up work left, remediation, a stove for winter, in this glorious location. the month almost gone, and now heading south. coming down from Glade Park, Rock Ridge Lane. and doing the Western Slope: en route Glade Park – Durango and Richard and Holly’s place there, via Ouray and Silverton. classic Colorado drive. hard to leave this place.

and my Self wandering away from everything again, to Oz. this does not seem to be auspicious, ever, for whatever reasons. I do not know what to think of this anymore. the desire to live in Colorado truncated by the inabilities to re-frame the self and the skills possessed in order to work / to live. or is it merely a change of perspective that is necessary? I would suspect the latter as there are more than five million people living in Colorado right now. Most of them manage to live. Given, of course, that 11.2% of them are below the poverty level, that leaves 88.8% that keep at least one nostril above the water line. Of course, I could survive there, without any other degrees or knowledge-bases: it’s all in the (internal) perspective.

whilst the travelog shudders along, firing on less than four cylinders, knocking on too much ethanol, and not going fast enough. (I post this more than six month into the future from the now in the images, damn.)

posted
  • place: Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

western terminus Yampa Bench

west terminus of Yampa Bench at the Chew Ranch, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado, May 2010

Sleep difficult, not sure why, whether simple discomfort, though the back of the truck seems very comfortable in the immediate impression, warm, soft enough, but body cannot find a comfortable position, side to side, somehow, problems. Could be that yoga hasn’t been happening in the last days. Hiking is a challenge for the body as well.

Drive up to the head of Sand Canyon, intent on doing a hike, but what looks like bad weather coming in, a heavy front across the whole west, sends me back after a short recon along the Bench Road. It seems doable as an alternative escape route, if this end is the worst, though, in wet conditions, forget it. And it totals thirty miles to Elk Springs, not just the three miles I did on recon. Almost all of it is in the red and yellow (bentonite) clay-sandstone alluvium, and this is precisely this same stuff which sits at the top of the Echo Park Road — from the 2000-foot displacement on the Mitten Park Fault, so, no real solution in heavy and widespread rain. However, this doesn’t seem the case — the rain is sporadic, fast-moving, and interspersed with bright sunshine and the roads are basically still dry after two days of ‘winter storm,’ so fretting about it is a waste of energy. Either I get out on Friday or I don’t and have to wait a few days. Plenty of water, fuel, and food, so that is no problem. The only locked-in point is the flight next Wednesday evening to Portland. But I’d still hate to miss the yurt-raising in Glade Park at Collin and Marisa’s this weekend! more “western terminus Yampa Bench”

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CLUI: Day Six — intention

The psychical framing of intention within the making/creating of a reductive tracing of the phenomenal world would seem to be critical. What is the intention of an image, for example? Is it as fundamental as the intention of God in the creation of the world? Or can it be explained away as merely an artifactual process of the techno-social system that one happens to be embedded within? Clearly one intention is to use the artifact to say “Look what I saw!” And, so, the process should never be undertaken when there are others around, as they are already experiencing the phenomenal world, albeit from another point of view. Although this suggests that the artifact is used in the presentation and validation of one point of view with an other. (This presentation process and its outcome may also fast-forward root into the resonances arising from the juxtaposition of those two differing POV’s). Is this the sole, core reason? Or is there something else? Is there more to it? This juxtaposition (though more complex and intertwined than that word suggests) is a form of dialogue in that extended sense of the energized interaction of the Self and the Other. hmmm.

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

another spadeful of encounter

In the contemporary framework of human encounter—dominated by instances of hyper-commerce and of tele-mediated presence—life changes to fit the mediation (it does not evolve in the same sense that Darwin’s idea of the process; instead it simply fits the technology), and the character of encounter with(in) life alters for each shift in the techno-social milieu that collectively generates the allowed pathways of exchange.

Freedom is not a question in this situation. Nor is autonomy. Those are absolutes of the abstract: virginal conceptions not directly related to the contingencies of be-ing in and of the world. Absolutes and abstractions do not prepare the Self for the shifting potentialities of collective human encounter which proceed by degree and layered complexity. And indeed, when abstractions govern encounter, the full field of possibility of human encounter is quickly limited to a less-than-finite set of conditions, processes, and outcomes. There arises the alienation of emotive loss in this limitation, but that is another issue to raise elsewhere. Or perhaps this alienation is the reciprocal experience of the (unfulfilled) possibilities of creative encounter.

Or is all this just about losing or gaining procreative (evolutionary) advantage for the species (via technological augmentation), and nothing more?

The fact that the strongest, most beautiful, most intelligent are, overall, given social reward when compared to the least. (Recognizing this, the revolutionary community organizer, Jesus, said (as interpolated by Mathew) “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” to invert the perception of this evolutionary order, and the alternative fact that following his lead will actually alter the order. Was this a miraculous strike at limited potentialities? Or mere agitprop for political expediency?

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trauma

Yes, there was an event; yes, an event began, barely, when she began to say something. But this event did not come to fruition, for nothing, nothing really, happened — except a sudden defamiliarization of my world, an unforeseen estrangement brought about by the least violent of all acts — the mere emitting of sounds — that topple the sense-structure of my world. After she breached my silent existence, silence returned, devouring both of us again by expropriating my ability to respond. So nothing, nothing really, happened. But this nothing, compared to “idle chatter” and the “forgetfulness” of an ordinary conversation, was much more dramatic. It produced in me an effect like no other. Considering what happened, or rather, what failed to take place, I must confess that I was profoundly affected by it. In fact, I am still living that event through the unique nothingness brought home to me by the incident, suffering from it, agonizing over it as an event that keeps returning as a non-event. In any case, the undeniable fact is that there was an event, there took place a situation that, although nothing, nothing really happened in it, is still happening now. It was like a traumatic “primal scene,” forever gone but constantly coming back. — Briankle Chang, (1996) Deconstructing Communication: Representation, Subject, and Economies of Exchange. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (p 224)

Reflecting on the abstracted essence of the gap between the self and the other: it suggests the reality that we cannot share the same point of view. There exists an infinitely deep irruption, separation, or gap, between the Self and the Other. This is defined partly by the presence of the energized matter that makes up our bodies and by the fact that this particular embodied form of matter cannot be collocated or commingled with another body. There is the warm and wet topology of sensual engagement, but this is not collocation, though some would like to believe that it is. The Self will never share the same point-of-view as the Other. My eyes cannot be collocated with yours. I may exchange places with you, but when all is change along the arrow of time, what you experienced there and then, I cannot experience there and now. The interstitial chasm exists within constant change and flow and it exists as long as life is embodied. Some models of transcendence suggest a unification, an omniscient one-ness, after embodiment ends, but here and now we all face the challenge of hypostasis, that puzzling duality of existing in a transitory body now and yet connected with an apparently detachable spirit before and after.

Communication cannot not take place. — ibid, p. 227

posted

notes prior to Memory Seminar with Andrew Hoskins

The concept of memory is related to my own work and practice — as an artist, part of my work does relate to the creation and preservation of my personal archive. Also, memory is a feature of collective Techno-Social Systems as a mapping of embodied participation in that system over time. It is also a concept to consider in the wider perspective of my work which examines human presence, encounter with the Other, collective social systems and their impact on the individual and finally, creative action.

Memory is the trace of energies from the surrounding situation that literally impress (on) the embodied self. Making the radical assumption framed by the words of physicist David Bohm, that

… there is a universal flux that cannot be defined explicitly but which can be known only implicitly, as indicated by the explicitly definable forms and shapes, some stable and some unstable, that can be abstracted from the universal flux.

Phenomenal events and configurations of these energies pass through the body (as simply another manifestation of this flux), leaving altered states of be-ing. These embodied traces persist in time, but as with all life and being, are transitory. They exist as change, and are often experienced as a fundamental awareness of difference — “I originally felt like that, but now I feel like this, having experienced this event.”

External memory storage situations via digital technological mediation are, by nature, material, reductive, and transitory. They are subject to decay and loss as with any other external (and internal) means.

Three significant issues arise in the process of externalized memory storage. The first is in the process of creating the artifact. As with any pre-digital artifact, making a “memory” artifact requires that the Self (or someone) step out of living and mediate their presence in the operation of the device that creates the artifact. This stepping out applies not only to the making of the artifact but also to the (onerous) process of archiving. This process radically changes the experience of a life-trajectory by an individual. And, as suggested by Quantum ideas, the observer affects that which is observed, the act of making memory artifacts actually affects the scenario that is being recorded.

A second major issue occurs when any of these processes are taken over by extensions of the Techno-Social System, they subject the Self to a loss of autonomy. (i.e., cloud computing as one example of a centralized architecture that removes the trace of the digital artifact wholly out of the purview of the individual (creator, participant).) The levels of loss of autonomy exist on a sliding scale — loss occurs whenever the individual is not in control of the mediatory storage (its provenance, creation, organization, archiving, sustenance, distribution, demise, destruction). Any externalization falls under this regime.

The third issue lies in the maintenance of archive. As a fundamentally ordered system (timely retrieval is critical for a functioning archive), the archive requires an essentially constant energy influx to maintain that order. That energy source is, at base, the human being. How much personal energy will humans participating in a Techno-social system be willing to dispense of or provide/support in order to maintain an ever-growing energy burden of either a collective or individual archive? Is this why the Library of Alexandria burned?

posted

code and money

Michael Bauwens on the iDC list:

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

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

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

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

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

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

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

open dialogue

What of the experience of an opening, an open, dialogue? Re-creating that experience of presenting the Self to a random collection of Others. Or to a single Other. I keep thinking of identifying, finding an Other who would be willing to have a series of dialogues that would be re-produced for the purpose of mapping out the initial space wherein the model (as script) is to be constructed. The script being a primary resource for a 60-80 hour workshop (which would never be used because the workshops are open systems and have to leave a script behind soon after starting). It would merely point in the direction for certain issues (resourcing them), giving a framework that is an optional (inspirational) component for the process. As a multi-modal hypertextual object within a social networking space, it would imitate/mimic the knowledge-flow features of a more traditional teacher (and little or nothing else — memesis of a teacher being a fundamentally antithetical concept regarding outcomes of learning!). Fundamentally, the workshops are about attentive presence, that crucial realized, actualized, and embodied facilitation process. You had to be there. (So, back to the conundrum of being and not-being when documenting, re-producing life.)

Memory — especially the memory of human encounter — is the tangible, real resonance between the Self and Other, arising through the movement of energies. Memory is a re-configuration of the energy-field that is called body; it is a dynamically persistent re-configuration of the Self. This re-configuration requires the movement of energy between the Self and the Other. I’ve been thinking about you a lot. That is the minimum requirement, and, perhaps is the only requirement, as it is the essence of the process of encounter. It is the encounter, and the flows that are the event of encounter (the Light coming from the body of the Other, the sounds emanating from them, their cumulative presence) which precipitate change in the Self. The only further commentary might come from a qualitative exploration of the flows, and the possible blocks to flow that are ever-present in relation. This view of communications does not fall easily into the traditional phenomenological tradition of communication theory. And indeed, most theories of communication that I have run across are tightly focused on language and meaning rather than any acknowledgment of a real and tangible exchange of energies that occurs in any human encounter (even when subject to the relative intensities of mediation which, in fact, are simply the presences of different forms of energy pathways imposed by cultural conditions (both internal and external to the encounter)). [ED: burbling parenthetic expression, uff]

posted
  • place: Millers Point, NSW, Australia

to be mindful of modalities

exploring modalities of communication. of connection, of be-ing. Kittler shows up on the radar immediately (hmmm, recalling that extremely uncomfortable evening with him in that bar in Linz before the Intertwinedness happening. he needed the table to circulate around him. and it did because of the language (protocol) gap. I was not fluent in German enough to access the discussion that inevitably circulated, hovered, around him. strange situation. instead I talked with his assistant (and translator whose name I have now forgotten), a young American who came to worship Kittler in Berlin for a time. I left early as I had to catch a train to Copenhagen early the next morning.)

how to bind energy in to the text [as the particular creative output]. to be released in TIME. to the proper receiver.

that from an earlier travelogue entry. it clearly has been on mind for a long time. actually the transition from print-making to performance/happening was a mapping of that need. finding that the silver print was just too rigid a platform when compared to presence. although the print is, as with anything, in retrospect, a resonance of presence and be-ing as is any trace left in the wake of life.
more “to be mindful of modalities”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

May Day

Month swings into May seeming. No May Day celebrations here. The Red Scare still too enfolded in natal-national psyches. No bonfires like in dark-less high-latitude white nights.

sotto voce: Being fixated on the material aspects and ‘things’ that spin off from our activated and energized presence in this world is probably where you are going wrong in pondering the “art-or-not” question. Experiencing the energies that arise from creative action—they may come ‘packaged’ in a practically infinite range of forms—it’s more a question whether you (as an individual made up of the accumulated life-pathway that you have experienced) have any opening to the energies that are carried by that form. Technology mediates the expression of creative energies (technology is the accumulated set of mediatory pathways for the expression of creative energies). So, it’s ‘merely’ a question of what paths of expression and reception are open between you and some Other with whom you are in creative exchange.
posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

iDC dregs

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

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

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)

PROPOSAL :: Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)

(a) Name, address, URL, email and one page CV of author.

John Hopkins

https://neoscenes.net/

John Hopkins is a networker, artist, and educator occupied across a wide swath of techno-social systems with an extensive global network presence. He is active in numerous global creative networks beginning with the Cassette Underground and the Mail Art networks in the 1980’s and merging seamlessly into the propagating telecommunications networks of the present. He has engaged in many individual and collective dialogues concerning the facilitation of collaborative creative situations, and has facilitated or participated in numerous distributed projects.

https://neoscenes.net/blog/cv-resume

(b) A 1000 word proposal that should be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 250 words and a list of keywords to indicate the subject area of the chapter. [Each of the commissioned chapters will contain text, images, videos, and/or audio.]

ABSTRACT more “Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)”

posted

thesis proposal :: Background

Background for Research

While individual human presence in this world has fundamental repercussions on be-ing, it is the ever-present and synergistic exchange between humans — forming what I call a “continuum of relation” — that governs much of life. This energetic field of human relation is sometimes fraught with difficulties and complications in spite of the rich and necessary dynamic it brings to life. Technology, as a ubiquitous factor in mediating human relation, often dominates while presented as providing the only opportunity for mediated connection and interaction between humans.

Presence, as apprehended by the Other, circumscribes a range of sensory inputs that require energy (from the Self) to stimulate and drive. The efficacy and sustainability of human connection builds on the very real and tangible transmissions and receptions of energy between the Self and the Other. An interconnected plurality of dialectic human relation may be described as a network. These networks, made up of a web of Self-Other connections form the base fabric of the continuum of relation. Technology appears in these networks as the mediating pathway that is the carrier of energy from node to node, person to person. Technological systems also appear to apply absolute restraints on and attenuation of the idiosyncratic flows inherent in that continuum of relation. The discrete objects that populate the (technological) landscape of the continuum of relation and that modulate the character of communications are literally artifacts of a materialist point of view. A primary assumption in my research is that a materialist or mechanistic view of the world no longer suffices to adequately circumscribe the phenomena occurring within the continuum of relation. more “thesis proposal :: Background”

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

Art and Teaching Philosophy

ART

Art, at its social core, is the trace of an engaged and immersive pathway. A pathway that conducts the circulation and exchange of creative human energies as they are attenuated and directed by a vast range of mediative (materialized) carriers. The artist is that person who opens and offers the Self in a humane seeking: to engage in a dialogue of energies with an Other. Finding a proper pathway for those energies—transmitting: simultaneously receiving the expressions of the Other—this is the moving act of creativity. Creativity is the charged flow of energies between and through the Self and the Other over relative spaces and times.

These two proto-definitions are the basis of my art and teaching praxis. more “Art and Teaching Philosophy”

posted
  • place: Bedford, New York

the mortal world

the year approaches a close — media layered on media layered on media — radio reporting on blogging; radio reporting on others having television programs; radio interviewing other people who have been to movies and what they thought about the movie. what can this be about? does it make a difference in how life is actualized, lived, exercised? is it the same as this travelog — which is media showcasing mediated living. it can’t show that which is in between the moments of mediation, that which is, only that which is re-presented.

Orchids come from the mountains,
And to the mountains they should return.
Orchids housed in pots in the mortal world,
Are not as beautiful as those which accompany the mists and clouds.

posted
  • place: Bremen, Germany

meta/data

in the midst of Frieder’s piles of books and papers to-be-dealt-with (meticulously organized, to be sure), is a copy of Mark’s new book on MIT Press, meta/data. a remix auto-biography of his last 15 years or so.

comparing/contrasting to my own traces is a strange flux of feelings. where practice is sampled (how, what, and into what form) and translated (re-mediated) into another form. it is only the form of the mediation that determines the relative fed-back social efficacy of the individual (or social sustainability of the individual’s praxis). the books points to, alludes to, hints at, expands upon, posits, and invents a praxis, part of which is the reflexive re-creation of a praxis. but does it engage in an authentic praxis that is not about pragmatism and social role-playing?

it is clear that it is the choice of propagation channels that ultimately determines how the Self is or is not rewarded by the larger social system. it is also clear that these choices will also have a profound affect on the human relationships that ensue.

how to select those forms? Mark’s book and documented practice seems optimized, pragmatic, and formal (that is, formed to optimally integrate into an existing social reward system). the question of form returns again and again. along with the embedded-ness within a social system that has strictly limited pathways for reward and punishment.

I understand the principle, but choose to engage in the praxis which supersedes the documentation of the praxis. although I continue to write, make images, sound and video works, and so on — none of which garner any attention whatsoever.

the presence of the personal network of a handful of deep supporters is the only plus to the path of the praxis. otherwise, might as well be living on the streets. or simply finished off with the whole thing.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

The Wild Surmise

Sue Thomas poses some interesting questions in her search for possible synergies between the cyber and the natural. it’s an open project — add you own answers on her site!

Please describe where you lived and your strongest memories of nature during the years of your growing up. I’m interested in both positive and negative recollections of anything from the smallest plot to the largest wilderness, including animals and plants.

sotto voce: I am a native of Alaska, born there as a Cold War military child. My father, a senior Pentagon analyst, sport-hunted grizzly and polar bears among other magnificent animals. We moved to Boston, then Southern California, then Washington DC, living in suburban or rural fringes of cities. A primal memory was of viewing a total solar eclipse from a beach in Acadia National Park in the northeast state of Maine, USA, at five years old. Watching the sun be consumed, until there was only a shimmering ring of fire surrounding a black hole in the sky. My father was an amateur astronomer, and I accompanied him on a further four total eclipse expeditions. Along with these specific memories, there are general memories of sleeping in the woods, of eating around a fire, of washing in streams, mosquitoes, and dark star-brilliant skies. more “The Wild Surmise”

posted
  • place: en route San Francisco, California - Vancouver, Canada - London, England

Inuit dreams

Joe Nasogaluak of Tuktoyaktuk created this amazing piece (2 meters wide!) carved from a Bowhead whale skull in 1992. it’s a work about Sedna, an Inuit sea goddess who rules over the Adlivun, the Inuit underworld. I note that Joe and I are the same age. And I did once get to Tuktoyaktuk for that total solar eclipse back in 1972.

on the road. by the time I post this I’ll be in London, safely ensconced at Joanna’s place. only the mediation of hours in hard-shaped public spaces lies ahead. and indeed, the system seems ever so fragile. needing constant invigoration, construction, maintenance. the 767 scheduled to take me from Vancouver to London breaks down. forcing an ancient 747 recently arrived from Toronto to be pressed into service for the long haul. somehow the seat I had selected online got translated from a aisle one to a window. despite there being some 1/3-full three-across rows, I just stayed where I was. too tired to change after the 4-hour mind-numbing delay. (the sound of) public null-spaces. grind the senses to a fine dust, leave them, particulate, ready to be disbursed by a Light breeze.

Canada. last time I was in Canada was for ISEA 1996 in Mon’real where I shared a room with Leslee and a couple other folks, or vaguely recall something like that. at least it was the same hotel. ever since going to the Calgary Stampede back in 1974 on the way to Alaska along the Al-Can Highway, and some summer camping trips with Aunt Mary to the Maritimes and PEI, Canada has always had special status in my psyche. despite the funny way of talking! a niece who is homesteading there in BC now, too. O Canada! eh?

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

vholoce

another Furtherfield review:

All phenomenon have the potential of being converted into infinite data-streams which become an archive of knowledge through which it is possible to organize social behavior.

Vholoce is one project in a long line of projects which seeks to creatively engage the ubiquitous data-streams that are flooding our virtual world. The rising flood of data is useless without sensible display. Visual (and sonic) display of digital data is a fundamental contemporary issue. But what is sensible display? Using a data stream as a basically random source for visual display is one way to play with the stream. The syntax of visual display (possibly) becomes the site for expression by the creative producer. The data-stream source, the method of (and reason for) display, and the overall creative process need to be interrogated in order to find the basis for type of digital engagement.
more “vholoce”

posted
  • place: Brooklyn, New York

Brooklyn meetings

walking down Bedford Street I meet the lady with the lime green brolly heel-toeing it briskly to the wine shop, kitty-cat in a tote bag, and stories about winning over the boys in the community garden. dinner with Amanda and Stephanie, at Amanda’s place in Brooklyn. along with Mr. Tiger, Amanda’s new cat who seemed easy-going and sociable despite battle scars from street life in Brooklyn.

earlier I was able to get together with Eric, a sharedj activist among his many other talents. at a cave-like cafe in Brooklyn he showed me some of his keyworx-based work which immediately brought to mind Stan Brakhage’s aesthetic which could easily be described as the precursor to much vj work in the present time (including my own). although my contact with Brakhage was, on a film-production level, limited, the discussions, and more importantly the simple exposure to his vision through screenings of his and other’s work was moving and formative to the inner eye. he had his little cubby-hole office next to and half the size of mine when I was a grad student, so we got to know each other better through informal chats — life is short art is long…

Imagine an eye un-ruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, and eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of ‘Green’? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heat waves can that eye be? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the ‘beginning was the word.’ — Stan Brakhage

anyway, back to Eric’s output — he also collaborates as a tenor and lutenist on an entirely different plane in Asteria, a Medieval/Renaissance music duo. he passed on a copy of Soyes Loyal, their latest album featuring Burgundian chansons of courting and love from the 14th century. Eric’s divergent interests and skills are incongruous on the surface but stand as a strong example of how personal energy transmission does not have to be closely tied to form but rather to the efficiency with which one finds the projection of such energy through a chosen material mediation. Eric is attentive, concentrated, skilled, and definitely efficient transforming his energy into a variety of forms of inspiration.

you can test track their two albums at magnatune.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

revolution

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

and more iDC mailing list commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

etc, etc.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

structural holes

Hunting more background on the ‘structural holes’ issue that Burt raises in relation to the geometry of links in a social network. Goyal, in laying out the question of whether or not connectivity is a sustainable strategy, formulates the ground conditions:

We develop a simple model of network formation to address this question. We consider a setting where interaction between every pair of individuals generates a surplus. If two individuals are directly linked then they split this surplus equally, while if they are indirectly connected — there are other players in the ‘path” between them — then the division of surplus depends on the competition between these intermediaries. In this setting, there are three types of incentives for individuals to form links with others. The first incentive is the desire to create surpluses: individuals would like to join the network so as to create exchange possibilities which in turn create surpluses. The second incentive is related to the rewards from intermediation: players would like to place themselves between others in order to extract rents from intermediation. The third incentive arises out of the desire to avoid sharing surpluses with intermediaries; in other words, individuals will try to circumvent intermediate players to retain more of the surplus for themselves. — Sanjeev Goyal

The allusion to a surplus in the connection between two individuals is one of the first uses found in network theory that is in the direction of my research — where a core outcome of the series of bi-directional connections that occur in an open network is a surplus of energy. Back to the 1+1=3 theory. The extraction of ‘rent’ however brings up an entirely different mechanism. The mechanism is the applied attenuation of social strictures (as applied through the full range of ‘technological’ mediation) that extracts energy from the pair of engaged individuals — in this case, the third party happens to be in control of the ‘spending’ of energy from that immediate social energy bank. So, two separate and very different dynamics happening, not degrees of the same process.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

techne rhetorike

Starting off the month with reading more from and about David Bohm, the quantum physicist and researcher into the nature of human relation (in the form of his defined term, dialogue). He maintained a suspicion about language, that it formed a mechanism which reified that-which-was-being-talked-about as it was (being) manifest in language. The idea that thought tends to impress a static order on the world outside. (And meanwhile, accepting the premise that all reality is a dynamic procession, thought included.) However, there is an inexorable process — as thought creates knowledge from reality (experience) — that seeks to lock in a fragmentary (incomplete) view excised from reality. This is one general characteristic of linguistic representation of dynamic reality. In a similar vein, Walter Ong (2002) maintained that the transition from aural to written to printed language defined deep shifts in the relation of the Self to the Other and to reality. He compiled a set of characteristics of expressed/expressive thought (=spoken word) that supports the necessary salience of aurally transmitted information (as there were no other ways to catch / statify information in aural cultures):

expression is additive rather than subordinate;
it is aggregate rather than analytic;
it tends to be redundant or “copious;”
the process tends to be conservative;
out of necessity, thought is conceptualized and then expressed with relatively close references to lived reality;
expression is agonistically toned;
it is empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced;
it is homeostatic;
it is situational rather than abstract

The key to most of these characteristics is that they directly relate to embodied presence versus the absence (and abstractedness!) of a (printed) text. So that here, in this blog, there is a long sequence of absences, separations — which together accumulate as disembodied virtuality. Ong elsewhere hints about the cumulative effect of this movement from embodied connection with language to the abstractions of mediation introduced by printed texts. And on into the further mediation in telephony (all ‘tele’ or attenuated/virtual realities I would suggest). Socialization is that process of abstraction and reification of what were once active and dynamic processes happening at a granular level of human-to-human. The process moving from dialogue to incontrovertible law (protocol) is a mapping of the ‘advance’ of a social system. Yet, social order is dependent on that dynamic of that granular ground state of the system — at least if a society wishes to retain a vital edge on evolutionary survival. It is precisely this reification process that spells the doom of a social system — though often not before that system has attained a temporary advantage over other systems (by being more efficient in a materialist way), and caused great suffering and alienation.

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Partial Description of the World

I don’t normally post long passages of other writers, but Alan (Sondheim) posted this to nettime today: it penetrated the fog of hypo-texts that floods a typical day in front of screen-life.

The power grid provides 60 Hz here at approximately 115-117 volts; this is maintained by dynamos driven by steam or coal or oil or hydro held together in a malleable grid. The grid enters the city, where electricity is parceled out through substations to cables continuously maintained and repaired. Here, the cables are below ground. They drive my Japanese Zaurus PDA which utilizes an entire linux operating system on it. The Zaurus connects to the Internet through a wireless card that most often connects to my Linksys router, which is connected both to the power grid and the DSL modem by a cat cable. The DSL is operated by Verizon with its own grid at least nation-wide and continuously-maintained. The DSL of course connects more or less directly to the Internet, which is dependent upon an enormous number of protocol suites for its operation, the most prominent probably TCP/IP. The addresses of the Internet, through which I reach my goal of NOAA weather radar, are maintained by ICANN and other organizations. These organization are run by any number of people, who employ the Net, fax, telephone, and standard mail, to communicate world-wide. more “Partial Description of the World”

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  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

movie

see Come and See by Elem Klimov — a movie that pressed certain icons into my awareness a year or so after it was released (1985), at the International Film Series at CU-Boulder. I think I went with Chris to that screening, almost 20 years ago. but the imagery of the film remained present and powerful. the machine of war. long single takes and shots always seduce my eye. like the opening shot in Schindler’s List — impossibly long and powerful. Klimov ends Come and See with an incredible steady-cam movement through a dense forest, following the marching partisans. films should leave images in the psyche. that’s what mediation does, finds a means to impress the eye, and so the soul. guard this with care.

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  • place: The Mission, San Francisco, California

places, sounds, words

portrait, Sirpa, Mission 17 Gallery, San Francisco, California, June 2005

make a blitz into downtown to meet Sirpa and check out her exhibition in the Mission. we met nearby at her friend Alice’s home and drive down to the gallery, the Mission 17 Gallery. parking is a hassle, with my boat-length pick-up. not used to driving it in compact urban settings. walk down Mission, thinking that this setting is almost identical to Brixton in London when I was there with Pete. urban complexity, noise, confusing information flows, mixed cultural impulses, chaotic surface intersections and orientations.
more “places, sounds, words”

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Weiner

back to the thesis application preparation. the following is, in a way, a Utopian case that forgets the holistic and distributed system that communication and its impulses arises in:

We have thus established the basis in man for the simplest element in his communication: namely, the communication of man with man by the immediate use of language, when two men are face to face with one another… this capacity is not intrinsically restricted to the immediate presence of the individual, for we have many means to carry this tool of communication to the ends of the earth. — Norbert Weiner

while the premise is intrinsically true, Weiner neglects (for example) the reality of the infrastructure assembly process to undertake the real movement of language across those vast distances. those infrastructures do not materialize themselves. they are specific and real social constructs. assemblages that social systems expend liberally on to assemble and maintain: they are the fabric of the social system — the techno-social system. therefore, while the mediation of abstracted language can be shuffled around, the human participating in the system of shuffling does, somehow use some real energy in order to participate. while this energy, considered on a limited scale may seem minor or non-existent — i.e., someone hands me a phone to make a trans-continental call, which I undertake with an expenditure of a marginal amount of embodied energy — someone, somewhere, as part of the larger social system, collected vast amounts of energy from the distributed individuals that make up the system and assembled the entire electrical/physical infrastructure of the telecom system.

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The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks

A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor’s note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 that set life on another trajectory.]

1.0 Statement of Problem

1.1 Introductory note

Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. more “The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks”

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

story-placing

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

Located story-telling

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

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

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

“You know the Hellisheidi road?”

“Já”

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

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

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

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

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

the price of linguistic reduction

the sheer indeterminacy of ideas about things and actions and events:

Bohr was the first to recognize that the new quantum theory presented us with a view of experience in which different interactional arrangements resulted in complementary perspectives that need not be logically consistent, compatible, or commensurable, and in many critical cases could not be so. The reductionist trick was predicated on the assumption that the different ‘pieces’ or views from different perspectives could always somehow be neatly fit together. But we now know that material processes cannot be comprehended, cannot be exhaustively described within any one single self-consistent formal discourse. They always overflow the limited possibilities of our semiotic models of them. It is only by building more and more semiotic-discursive models, each internally self-consistent, but not limited by requirements of mutual consistency with each other, that we can, by adding together such ‘complementary’ views, attain to the most complete possible account of material phenomena, including semiosis itself. Thus we still come back to a version of ‘assemblage’ but hopefully a more sophisticated one, one that takes into account our own role and perspective as observers, as well as the material means by which we observe, compare, and assemble — the material mediation of our semiotic practices. — J. L. Lemke, in Material Sign Processes And Emergent Ecosocial Organization

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  • place: Prague, Czech Republic

penthouse

The first day: the feng shui of the room is complicated by rafters, skyLights, and the orientation of the bed. will have to think about that. Meeting Milos who is terribly sick with this flu epidemic sweeping across central Europe. I am hoping it is the same bug that is in Bremen, so that there’s no further risk of infection.

sotto voce: The deep mediation of human presence by technology is a critical issue in the moment. A radical shift in awareness is necessary to decode the creative possibilities and complex problems of what is becoming a kind of global crisis. Establishing a lived artistic praxis that is beyond ego, product, and process, one that is expressed in momentary be-ing and is beyond the framework of consumerism is of the greatest importance. The dynamic of human networks suggest a powerful model for this praxis. By understanding the role of technological mediation in the larger picture, it is possible to re-establish a condition where humans lead technological development instead of the other way around.
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  • place: Köln, Germany

back in the city

time slips. many direct impressions, people, dialogues. and that directly keeps time away from the keyboard of this machine. for some measure of being that shifts away from mediation to the contingencies of momentary presence. as usual, when visiting Volker, we spend much time meeting and visiting with local artists and connections he has in the Köln area. the evening with Thomas was interesting, jumping into the Catholic church where there is an exhibition opening for Rune Mields. the work is about her research into the numerous convents that were once scattered around the center of Köln, and the process of secularization initiated by Napoleon that destroyed them. Thomas has had MS for more than 25 years but remains upbeat about his situation and intense about his artistic ambitions: brilliant!

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  • place: Ukiah, California

what is this?

landscapes: social, cultural milieu shift in range of eye and ear. Amurika, what it is, what it should be, what it imagines of itself, how it synthesizes its face, how it acts, how it predicts, within the full depth of its deepening un-sustainability. to surface through the fragile impossibility of material wealth. it’s confusing. no critique, rational or irrational, will have any effect. teevee shows of crying parents and wives, reading last letters of soldiers gone in Iraq. what is this for? why this mediation of grief. what is this? presenting the lined faces, the tears, the quavering voices, and the simple expressions of life now gone, erased through some destined fate, whatever that is. sustainability is erased in the same way the youth is erased from the soldier’s face.

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  • place: Akureyri, Iceland
  • enclosure: https://neoscenes.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2004/10/20041023_mil_ind_speech.mp3 14572916 audio/mpeg

until that day

Check out this 10-minute farewell speech by an outgoing US president. And you might understand better the position that we are in today with the US internal (and consequently, external) politics dominated by the military-industrial complex. pretty surprising, considering who it is coming from. General Dwight Eisenhower. but the mapping out of the consequences of allowing a society to be under the shadow of this agglomeration is chillingly prophetic. The situation is grave. And I DID cast a vote in this election, after some years of not doing so, based on my experiences in the 1980 presidential campaign which was a farcical face-off between Carter and Ray-Gun, with John Anderson making the most credible and successful campaign as an independent candidate to date. I worked as campus rep for Anderson, met him a couple times, and saw clearly that the electoral college system was stifling democratic expression in the country. It’s good to see that the whole structure is under deep scrutiny these days, now in Colorado and California (Maine and Nebraska already award proportional electoral college votes based on popular votes). Scrapping it would at least bring a superficial element of democracy back into a system that is hardly democratic in the sense of one-man-one-vote. Instead, direct or indirect cash reserves are the true test of a candidates viability (not intelligence or fitness for the job), and campaigns burning up billions of dollars in media propaganda confirm that only those with access to extreme wealth have any possibility of acceding to power. That base fact along with the rapid evolution of the realities of life in the US to a psychical space of absolute fantasy through the power of wholesale mediation of what once was direct human connection.