posted

on brainstorms

brainstorms fragment out of context:

It’s also that any system in our heads is a model, as the thing itself is ‘out there’ (although we may also be a part of the model as well!)… Recalling that it is a model accentuates the fact that there are as many models as there are [fill in the blank]. Plurality rules, whether we like it or not! And none of them are the ‘thing’ itself. Talking, thinking about systems is an immediate reduction to model state rather than the whole of the whole. In a way it’s all about how we relate/react to the plurality.

posted

sliding scale versus spectral range

I often use the metaphor of “sliding scale” to indicate a situation that can be described as having two end points and a continuum of blended conditions between those two points. The image came about first when talking about the different social relations indicated by the two end points “network” and “hierarchy” — and how any particular social system can be characterized as sitting somewhere along the line between those two (theoretical!) end points. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the geometric linearity of such a metaphoric illustration, though, as is relies on a limited Cartesian model. And, indeed, in an open system there are no end points to any particular description system. So, does “spectrum” OR “spectral range” perform an adequate substitution?

To speak of or to “re-present” an open system is to close the system. Language and re-presentation is a process of reduction and modeling of reality (where reality is the open system). The question of the adequacy of representation is core in this Age of Data Mining. The challenge of rendering digital data into human-readable analog information that can be effectively interpreted will always be the limiting factor in any data-driven decision-making process.

Back to the spectrum question: it is foundational to identify the (multi)variables that are of interest or crucial to what is being examined. A spectral space allows for this, but also allows for degrees of complexity that are greater than can be sensibly interpreted. This is where intuition, not analysis, comes into play. Forget artificial intelligence (what has intelligence brought us, anyway?); forget fast-Fourier-transformations (except in the case that they are generated through meat-space neural cascades; better to use a manual quasi-Gaussian blur by squinting and whatever analog output you can manage)… argh; the question of interpretation of what the spectral model presents is another challenge altogether.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

Full dissertation text: The Regime of Amplification

Well, I guess it’s about time to put the PhD dissertation text out there in .pdf form, so, here it is (PDF download):

The Regime of Amplification

Have at it, be polite, no grabbing, pushing, or shoving. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate. If you can prove that you’ve read it back to front, I’ll buy you a bottle of Herradura Añejo Tequila*, as long as we can split it!

*this is my hard liquor drink of choice since 1980 when it was hard to find even in the US southwest — cherished bottles imported into Iceland (bought in NYC at NY Liquors on Canal Street, the only place in NYC that carried it!) would last up to six months, like a fine Scottish whiskey, small glasses for sipping — none of that brutish slugging down shots or making margaritas with this fine distillate.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

the academic dance

In response to yet another call for papers at an academic conference on the fibreculture list (this, unsent as I thought it too in-your-face).

fibrecultists:

I’m making the contrary assumption that fibrecult is not merely an announcement list these days … I could be wrong, but …

3D printed goods, cryptocurrencies, digital sharing – just some of the disruptive online practices and technologies that are transforming and reshaping our economy. These innovative technologies have impacted the market, enabling new business models, evolving market conditions and transforming economic and social landscapes. However, the commodification and commercial adoption of these disruptive technologies has also raised concerns and questions in terms of access, control and sustainability. How can we develop these practices to not only support a digital commons, but also to support more equitable and sustainable worlds?

The three items at the beginning of the paragraph above could very well be replaced by practically any ‘communications/fill-in-the-blank-here’ technology of the last 150 years. A materialist approach to technology, one that is hypnotized by each new and glittering object, its form, even its ‘potential’, seems never to learn any principled lessons on what is going on through technological ‘innovation’ and how to deal with it across the techno-social system. It’s as though there is a constant expression of surprise on the face of critical academic thinkers, “Oh look at this new toy coming from the ‘clouds’ today.” I can’t count the number of conference announcements from the academic-cultural-industrial complex of the last 20 years that read the same as this one, with only the names of the currently in-vogue technologies changed.

If there are no readily available and powerful answers *already in place* and *operational as a lived practice* for the issues and questions suggested by the rest of the paragraph, then there is absolutely no hope that an academic discourse will have any effect on the processes being commented upon. The gathering becomes simply another career notch of sessions, papers, panel discussions, talks, after-parties, meals, meet-n-greets, and, literally, insider trading in the currencies of academic ‘success’ (or survival, in the contemporary world of add-junk-tified edutainment). I understand there is always the need to propagate good ideas, and there are younger people who have to hash these things out in the face of a lack of historical perspective in their education, but it begins to resemble a treadmill that in no way serves to solve the problems.

I have no issues with the actual empowered coming-together of people, regardless of the reason, but it seems there is an inexorable evolution of academia towards a point where it is simply bankrupt of ideas *and lived practices* to deal with the current world. Where are the TAZs supporting change?

posted

hmmm, interesting, 1951

Men think in terms of models. Their sense organs abstract the events which touch them; their memories store traces of these events as coded symbols; and they may recall them according to patterns which they learned earlier, or recombine them in patterns that are new. In all this, we may think of our thought as consisting of symbols which are put in relations or sequences according to operating rules. Both symbols and operating rules are acquired, in part directly from interaction with the outside world, and in part from elaboration of this material through internal recombination. Together, a set of symbols and a set of rules may constitute what we may call a calculus, a logic, a game or a model. Whatever we call it, it will have some structure, i.e., some pattern of distribution of relative discontinuities, and some “laws” of operation.

…snip…
more “hmmm, interesting, 1951”

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: Bundoora, VIC, Australia

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”

posted
  • place: Preston, VIC, Australia

back to B&B

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

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

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

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

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

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

posted

modeling / simulation

The modeling approach has an advantage of any mathematical model; it can predict situations that cannot be reached experimentally. If quantitative data obtained from a well designed experiment allow a model to be constructed, the functionality of which is tested by comparison with experiments, the model can serve to investigate an infinite number of different situations such as those caused by mutagenesis, changes in activity of the elements of the system, etc. The model allows the dynamics of the process and the terminal states of the system to be investigated. It can bypass experimental limitations and thus explore biological situations currently restricted by experimental accessibility. It also brings deeper understanding of the nature of the whole process. The simulation capabilities are unlimited and can provide a check on the intuitive understanding of a process. — Vohradsky, J., 2001. Neural Model of the Genetic Network. THE JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY, 276(39), p. 36173.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

prana

Prana is an auto-energizing force which creates a magnetic field in the form of the Universe and plays with it, both to maintain, and to destroy for further creation. It permeates each individual as well as the Universe at all levels. It acts as physical energy, mental energy, where the mind gathers information; and as intellectual energy, where information is examined and filtered. Prana also acts as sexual energy, spiritual energy, and cosmic energy. All that vibrates in this Universe is prana: heat, light, gravity, magnetism, vigor, power, vitality, electricity, life and spirit are all forms of prana. It is the cosmic personality, potent in all beings and non-beings. It is the prime mover of all activity. It is the wealth of life. — indigoworld

yet another model of the substrate of all. I find it fascinating that there are configurations of humans who struggle to assemble these models in the face of transitory living. the process relies on a clear insight combined with precise observation of the phenomenal world around. take a breath.

posted
  • place: Whanganui, New Zealand

workshop – Day 9 – eNZed

prepping the waka, Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

Workshop day begins: first the waka time on the river. Morning cycle down the river to the Putiki boat ramp, get there a little early, and feel the nerves as to what is possible with the workshop. There have been numerous anticipatory conversations in the last days about what I will be doing. I take a small paper with thought-notes and put it in my life-jacket pocket.

I am fighting with the impression that there is a superfluity of input for the participants — some have not been on a river or so. My dilemma becomes a question of when to jump in and alter the flow of events and protocols which accompany the waka and the enveloping and powerful Maori cultural scenario. It makes no sense to do anything other than participate. Where full participation is a position, an approach to an eventuality of contingent life-flow. I am observing the processes and vibes that are coalescing, seeing if there is a auspicious moment to intervene, but I see none. Back to participating. Enjoying it all. The newness, but also the familiarity and comfort which the Maori protocol applies to that (community-facing) unknown, and The River. more “workshop – Day 9 – eNZed”

posted
  • author: Eric Kluitenberg
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog

The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realize the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of tele-presence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the re-invigoration of the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favor of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style. As current systems of hyper-mobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits – most prominently in the intense debate on global warming – citizens and organizations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced tele-presence technologies.

ElectroSmog and the quest for a sustainable immobility

The ElectroSmog festival for sustainable immobility, staged in March 2010 [1], was both an exploration of this grand promise of tele-presence and a radical attempt to create a new form of public meeting across the globe in real-time. ElectroSmog tried to break with traditional conventions of staging international public festivals and conferences through a set of simple rules: No presenter was allowed to travel across their own regional boundaries to join in any of the public events of the festival, while each event should always be organized in two or more locations at the same time. To enable the traditional functions of a public festival, conversation, encounter, and performance, physical meetings across geographical divides therefore had to be replaced by mediated encounters.

The festival was organized at a moment when internet-based techniques of tele-connection, video-telephony, visual multi-user on-line environments, live streams, and various forms of real-time text interfaces had become available for the general public, virtually around the globe. No longer an object of futurology ElectroSmog tried to establish the new critical uses that could be developed with these every day life technologies, especially the new breeds of real-time technologies. The main question here was if a new form of public assembly could emerge from the new distributed space-time configurations that had been the object of heated debates already for so many years?
more “Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog”

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

down on this

Einstein’s relativity and Heisenberg’s uncertainty have become our own. Even if we do not understand the science, we experience the reality.

Steve Dietz, Dreams of an (Un)Certain Future, in the “Sarai Reader 03,” p. 202

Part of the reminder that the map is not the territory, and the model is not the thing itself. We have the territory, we hold the thing itself, and it is a matter of finding our voice to describe both to those who are most immediately around us.

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

the fluidity of leaking

What could better illustrate the instability of protocol-driven social control systems than the phenomenon of a leak? Springing a leak is an irruption through a human-constructed wall (hull) holding back the chaotic flows of the sea. Wikileaks is a reversal of that, where the leak is from the inside of the ship-of-State to the outside. Where inside there are protocol-defined pathways of State-driven communication flow filling a space of partially-stabilized human endeavor. Every so often, one of the nodes of State communication goes rogue, mad, AWOL, counter, and defies the standing protocols by whatever means possible. Opening the mouth and speaking, telling the secrets of State, a yawning vomit of bilge over the sides: merely seasick.

The hull of the ship of State exists across a multi-dimensional space of refined/defined energy flow. Defined energy flow resists change and promotes continuance. Regarding the State, protocol controls individual behavior through internalized patterns of embodied thought. The State seeks any possible way to apply these internal protocols, and is successful if those ways promote the existence of the necessary flow pathways that insure the continuance of the structure of the State. The more rigid the expectations of the State, the more necessary the adherence to prescribed protocols (and vice versa). The State also applies controls to patterns of energy flow external to the body. These two (internal and external) sets of controls are not separate but rather are united in the space of flow to effect more-or-less total control on the participant and the crew of the ship of State. more “the fluidity of leaking”

posted

From The Regime of Amplification to The Road

[editor: this document was used for a mid-way doctoral assessment at the University of Technology Sydney and no longer reflects the final content of the PhD dissertation as of the April 2012 submission at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The presentation was accompanied by the video that is posted at the end.]

Abstract

The DCA project “The Road” is a psycho-geographic perambulation through a web of personal, social, and universal trajectories which form a new knowledge-base on the cosmos as an entropic system of energy flows. Within this worldview the project explores human presence, encounter, and interaction including a close look at the effects of techno-socially prescribed protocols on those indeterminate flows of energy. As a multi-modal online data-space, the project offers a variety of navigational strategies connecting a rich variety of audio, video, text, and image sources from the candidate’s extensive personal archive of creative material.

Introduction

The armature for this DCA as originally proposed was the concept of the amplifier. An amplifier is essentially a device that takes an incoming flow of energy (signal), and through an influx of power, generates a defined outflow of energy with a greater (directed) intensity. The amplification process needs an independent energy source to increase the signal strength. It also requires a set of protocols that guide the flow of energy from input through output: a coherent signal is a controlled energy flow as defined by applied protocols.

The road, as an expression of a techno-social system (TSS), exemplifies, or, more precisely, is one of these protocol-defined pathways. It was this realization during the last year of research which shifted my focus from the amplifier to the road as both a real and metaphoric concept that opens a rich space for inquiry. The road allows the TSS to express amplified energy flows along its protocol-defined pathway. It is not difficult to conceptually extend the idea of the road as any pathway for the directed and concentrated expression of energy of a TSS. more “From The Regime of Amplification to The Road”

posted

Migrating: Art: Academies: done

MigAA book cover (pdf download)

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

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

posted

etc…

The holistic energy-based model is necessary for sense, harmony, and accuracy (in accordance with observed phenomena). However, the entire point is to frame a (creative) praxis that has a broader awareness of the complex inter-relations of things (beyond things, well into flows!). This suggests a constant critique of the status quo, a presumption that life is not proceeding with enough creativity or enough vis viva. When is enough enough? (Too much is never enough!). But are these volumetric quantities anyway? Spatial, Cartesian? Nah! Creativity is a flow, non-localized (it affects all): it is characterized by temporary states, transitory awareness, evolutionary phase changes. It is continuous and indeterminate, available always in the interstitial actions which lie outside the control of the social system.

posted

L-I-M-I-T-E-D

Aside from a fraction of a kilo-ton of human-re-configured matter that has been more-or-less permanently jettisoned from the immediate gravitational field of the Terran system, all human activities are and always have been fully immersed in what, for the purposes of modeling, may be seen as a limited (eco-)system with limited energy resources. L-I-M-I-T-E-D. Followers of the develop-and-consume-at-any-cost economic philosophy appear to think that there is an un- at the beginning of limited. But are these limits germane regarding the scalar possibilities of alteration that 6.9 billion humans applies to the ‘closed’ system? Can this plague-species actually cause significant change? It’s maybe only a question of where on a sliding scale the alteration sits, and what range on that scale indicates ‘significant’ change.

It is not difficult to observe that all expressions of life have an affect on the immediate vicinity. The bed of dead leaves beneath the cottonwood, layered by age: age showing as a returning dissolution, collenchyma structures in the veins remain longer, the epidermis stripped away by insects, solar radiation, weather, and time. The altered rhizosphere full of exudates nourishing symbiotic microbial life which, in turn, alter the chemistry of the surrounding soil. The altered atmosphere, being distantly distributed by the wind, the absorption of Light. Animals consuming leaves, wandering away. Reverberatory. What does a tree do to the rest of the cosmos? It does. Clearly any form of life has this effect. It’s just a question of how much. Quantitative, with the qualitative in the affirmative, but still open to how.

posted
  • place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

end of the road

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

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

posted
  • place: Wendover, Utah

CLUI residency — Energy of Situation

Some final words on the residency period:

Energy of Situation

Rather than producing new material configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system, I chose to concentrate on a fundamental closer to the bone, as it were: the production of new configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system. What we do changes the cosmos, always, everywhere, (because everywhere’s are not separated nor distinct).

Traditional art production is (merely) the (re)configuration of certain flows in the near (and far) surround of the producer. My approach generally falls under this model but approaches the reconfiguration process from an entirely different path. Entering a ‘residency’ is (merely) moving from one (life)-situation into another: we are constantly doing this in life, transitioning from one semi-stable configuration to another, with periods of more-or-less instability in between. If one leaves traditional temporal and spatial metrics behind, this process may be seen simply as the modulation of a constancy of flowing condition. The particular conditions and configurations of a situation dictate the potential range of reconfigurations possible, given the energy input of the individual and the embodied life-energy/life-time that is available. The configuration is merely a cumulative apprehended set of flows occurring with a reductive purview (and is always relative to the observer!) There is the ‘locally external’ factor of the accessibility of external energy sources for reconfiguring, but if one approaches the situation as a more autonomous and self-contained instance, the range of possibility is limited just as life-time and life-energy is limited. It is along this approach that I undertook this residency. (I will here omit a wider discussion of the framework of my personal model of the cosmos as there isn’t the room here to undertake it even in brief).
more “CLUI residency — Energy of Situation”

posted

CLUI: Day Seventeen — Bonneville

sunset on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, April 2010

There is a large (black) raven (Corvus corax) who is in residence in the Enola Gay Hangar. There are some major areas of the roof and sides of the hangar where the corrugated sheeting has (surely!)been blown off over the years, so the interior is exposed to the elements and to natural energies. This raven (or two) is in residence somewhere high in the iron girders. Much of each day, especially during morning and evening, the raven is seen flying very purposefully between the hangar and a spot some 200 meters east of the hangar where there are some low scrubby bushes and open ground. (S)he flies back and forth not far from the window that I look out from on occasion as I work when inside the residency unit. Movement out the window catches my attention and about half the time it is the raven making this low and very determinate transit between the hangar and this spot. Occasionally the movement will be from the ground squirrel couple who has taken up residence in the underbelly of the Airstream, and otherwise, the few lizards will do their peculiar dances across the gravelly yard when it is warm; and lately, a handful of very small birds will spend the early evening hours, before sunset, picking aphids off the salt brush bush growing in the yard. But it is the raven who is most compelling. Back and forth. Before I leave, I want to hang out in the watch-tower and simply observe the flight cycle. I reckon (s)he’s gathering sticks for a nest, but I haven’t clearly seen anything in his/her beak on the flights back to the hangar, so it’s a question: what’s ‘e doin’? Actually it could be a pair of them, they are know to find a partner and mate for life. Hmmm, novel idea…

The ground squirrel pair is another matter. They’re gaining access to the otherwise pretty solid and gapless lower framework of the Airstream via the fold-out step area below the front door. There are also areas for critters to enter via the electrical and water hookup doors. One of those has a broken latch, so I think I will tap and screw that one down semi-permanently as the vehicle isn’t going to be moved anytime soon.

Neal and I head out to the Bonneville Flats towards evening. I want to cycle and he has some filming to do. Amazing Light. I cycle for about an hour, going about 8-10 miles out and then back. Hard to tell, dimensions are reduced to time alone (and body metrics). About five miles out there is a cluster of vehicles, apparently a photo shoot happening. Cycling down the ‘main drag’ of the speed-test area is a singular experience. Speed becomes necessary to overcome the lack of Cartesian cues, no pathway. Got to get somewhere. Got to approach those little specks in the distance. Oh, those are cars, sure takes a long time to get closer. Hit some areas where the salt is wet and there are loose crystals which splatter all over me. It mostly appears like ice, so brain is thinking danger! slick!, but it is quite the opposite, sticky like climbing on limestone.

The accompanying images are suffering from more digital camera woes — dust on the CCD. Absolutely disgusting. I don’t have a proper removal kit, and this Nikon model doesn’t have one of the vibrating sensors that can dislodge that extremely irritating blobs that end up on the sensor despite me never taking the lens off. Yet another disappointment with this Nikon (D200) — for the price paid it is real garbage compared to the old analog F2as and even Nikkormats from the 1970’s. I never had dust-on-film problems like this, ever! Neal has a nice Canon SLR system from his university, along with a HD 3-CCD chip DV cam. I’m jealous.

posted

CLUI: Day Seven — shorelines

looking north to Pilot Peak, off Rt. 93, near Wendover, Nevada, April 2010
Aim for the nearest topological features to the south, some small intrusives, an isolated fault block, likely, rhyolitic basalts of some sort (with some peridotites or greenstones possibly?). Lake Bonneville paleo-shorelines are visible, with a prominent one slicing the hills like a poorly-made isometric topo model. The hills are technically on the Air Force test range, but I disregard the signs (parking behind some low hills across the road in order not to attract attention).

Definitely a different regime than, say, the Sonoran desert. Here, the land seems more sterile and has only very low scrub, most less than a foot high. Low or black sagebrush (Artemisia), salt brush (Atriplex), rabbit brush, black brush, tumbleweed (Salsola pestifera), and a handful of other species are thinly scattered, with either desert varnish, pebbly sand, or the occasional small colony of cryptobiotic soil. Can’t really tell if this lack is a direct result from severe overgrazing (this is, after all, BLM land) or just a harsh (colder, drier!) regime here compared to the relatively abundant biota of the Sonoran.

Plenty of evidence of other human intrusions on top of the igneous stuff that these hills are made of. Bullet casings, scraps of glass and metal everywhere, bullet holes in anything worth shooting at. Two mines have burrowed into the earth, leaving debris, holes, and mounds, a refrigerator with major firearm damage, a twisted bike frame, and the shattered glass crunching underfoot.

The hills are much larger than they initially appear, a frequent phenomena in a landscape without the normal metrics for scale (trees and human structures). A great view in all directions from the top.

A lake shore sand deposit in the form of a light tan mudflat attracts my attention on the talus-skiing descent, as it is bisected by the old roadbed which exhibits the typical roadbed riparian affect — with visibly larger brush on either side of the eroding pavement — the direct affect of the slight concentration of runoff precipitation. Walking here in the flats one feels … exposed … as the occasional mining truck speeds by a mile or so away. The only relief among short sage brush are the holes dug by coyotes into smaller varmit holes, now that would be something to watch! Good for spraining an ankle if step is not watched closely. The only other difference are the widely scattered aluminum beer cans, mostly effaced of any markings by the brutal sun, sitting pell-mell in the sand.

I notice later that the Nikon has more crap on the CCD, about which nothing can be done — you can see two spots in the lower left center of the images. My irritation with this camera system increases as the years go by. I am constantly astonished at the poor quality of the lens, along with the dirt accumulation on the CCD — it’s a closed system, for god’s sake, how does it keep getting dirty? I don’t even take the lens off, ever! I think the Canon system is superior both optically and technologically. But nothing to be done about it, unless I decide against getting a new laptop and instead get a new camera. Ach, I get tired of technology!

posted

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…

posted

watcher/watched

Selling individual vision to an Other: convincing, forming mental models that will allow compelling suasion; pressing opinions, argument, elegant frameworks; all constructed with language, words, characters, academic form, journalistic style, flaccid prose, basic text, with footnotes or hyperlinks; bibliographic references to other words, other texts: but where is a praxis? Praxis weakens to a barely-lived presence fighting to become in a dominant social structure of insipid spectacle that maintains the attentions of a vast majority of the population. Those being watched increase in number to challenge that of the passive watchers. In many cases the passive watchers are the watched, and vice-versa. The consumption of the passive watchers is expansive, limitless, a whorish gaping maw willing to not just taste, but to gorge on anything that is mediocre, maudlin, bland, and self-serving; safe, pre-digested, pureed, and acceptable. Worked over. ‘urrrrp’

Indigestible fodder, poison, anathema, bloating farce, and gaseous prophesy.

The world is drowning in verbiage.

All protocols lead to artifice.

posted

desire, complexity, simplicity, determinism (mix-up mash-up)

Today, mulling the difference between technological determinism (as a self-propagating system on its own immutable trajectory) and the reciprocal idea that human social systems selectively construct the systems of technology they ‘desire’ (subject to all the variability of the particular social system within which the technology is embedded). Then, within that selection process, thinking about the process of development and the general trend towards greater complexity. Do these processes ever trend generally to greater simplicity? Does desire ever, on a wide social scale, ever become directed to less material abundance? Is material security predicated with amassing more-than-sufficient material wealth? Or do society-wide technological systems collapse towards simplicity only in cases of ‘natural’ disaster.

[Complexity and simplicity are used here as general indicators of the depth and breadth of the techno-social system’s process of provision and production that leads to services, situations, or products deemed necessary for participants. Metrics of complexity would include geographic proximity, ease of access, energy density, and the number of substantive steps required to produce a product or create a desired energy flow. The relative necessity of a product is highly subjective and varies widely between different systems. Necessity is a cultural construct (complementing, say, Maslow’s needful ranking). Complexity may be indicated by the number of discrete steps that can be described that a process passes through — steps/degrees of flow alteration.] more “desire, complexity, simplicity, determinism (mix-up mash-up)”

posted

technology fails

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

posted

abuse of power

Mills, using the key word, power, sketches out the relation between the individual and small groupings of people and their often problematic relation to those exercising power within The State. It is the terms abuse of power and exercising power which are most intriguing. What do they actually mean? I believe they are derived not from abstracted political relationships, but rather actualized movements of energy — deflected through socially-constructed pathways of relation — that may be read as the substance of the social system itself.
more “abuse of power”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

The uncontrolled gesture: go to your edge

Starting with the immediate body as a field-of-action to release control (versus the control-at-a-distance regime we are immersed within now):

Bushwhacking is a method to relinquish control of the trajectory of the body. By exposing the body to the unknown, one has to respond in real time, in the present. This present invites the presence of be-here-now and within that state of be-ing, the embodied self yields to the edge that divides the controlled from un-controlled. Precisely at that edge is the locus of active transformation and change. Making the next step into the unknown is, literally, an act of trust in the body, in a belief that entering the unknown will present possibility. Whether or not this possibility is merely the chance of the continuance of the species (in a biological framework), the projection of life into the not-now, the future, or whether it is an operative pre-condition for a transcendent state I cannot at this moment comment on. Somehow, this is a question that each individuated being self-wise has to make in each of those moments.
more “The uncontrolled gesture: go to your edge”

posted

inconsistency

The language is based on joining and dis-joining, you see. That is, it’s a perfectly good language if we could use it properly. It has to be used as an artistic form and not as a rigid tool which is supposed to reflect reality exactly — reflect what is exactly. It’s like the notes in music. They look quite separate, but when they’re played, they’re not separate. — David Bohm, dialogue with E.Nada

A necessary feature of the thesis project is inconsistency. For it to be a rich learning experience, it should be variable or stochastic. How to achieve a creative inconsistency, then? Where changing perspectives and voices and models and worn pathways exists in profusion that is at the same time, not overwhelming. A sequence of statements (each a consistent sound-bite), with threads of difference demarcating their extent, applicability, and style.

posted

affects and intentions

The idea comes that I can place different narratives and sonifications in the aporee context, making a global mapping of ideas mixed with sounds mixed with voices. But somehow this seems flat. Not that the platform lacks some aesthetic appeal, but the tendency would be to continue the same old process of archive-building (with the same old criteria of acquisition of material). Or, I thought about making a performative series in the Speakers Corner in the Domain. Still, the best idea to this moment is the one where I would simply engage with this material with one Other, expanding on it, presenting it in a dialogic setting, and reproducing that. Or this dialogic situation as a live performative undertaking with an audience.
more “affects and intentions”

posted

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
  • 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: Sydney, NSW, Australia

structural organization

Structural organization. Weaving this space of inquiry, exposé, or a web of deceit. A fabric of cloaking, or a dust cover for an old arm chair.

Van Leeuwen’s overview (in Multimodal Discourse) of an expressive situation that he labels semiotic production frames first a (situated) discourse which is then subject to design (to shape the delivery mechanism) which is materially formed in the production process followed by distribution (one-to-many propagation). These conceptual and actual stages are closely bound to a semiotics-based view which is rooted in the abstracted space of language and representation. This, despite the fact that the expressive action is indeed a real, tangible movement of energies from the producer to the receiver/consumer — it is not abstract. It is in this space between the models built in the abstracted semiotic space and the real executions that Dialogue, in the extended definition that I propose, occurs. It does not preclude any (most) semiotic models, but is sets the limits of their applicability that arise from the abstraction process that is inherent in language. The Dialogue model looks at these processes, steps in semiotic production as a continua of socially applied protocols which guide (provide a pathway for) energized expression from the Self to the Other — so that semiotic production is clearly not the thing itself, but an abstraction of it. (Van Leeuwen notes this when reflecting on the separation from embodiment that written language imposed on this abstraction process).
more “structural organization”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona - Berlin-Neukölln, Germany

48-Stunden Neukoellen 2009 : flickering wastelands III

A special live/streamed event, radio aporee presents flickering wastelands III in its long-standing open-house tradition. good foods, good sounds, good people. part of the 48-Stunden-(Berlin-)Neukölln Kunst und Kulturfestival. neoscenes, fresh back from many weeks on the road in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona will take you, with hydrocarbons flaring, on a drifting trajectory through spaces that dwell restlessly between ears and leave traces of soot, soil, and water (listen below!). more “48-Stunden Neukoellen 2009 : flickering wastelands III”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

and so on

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

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

Viva idiosyncrasy!

posted

violence

Technology and the internet have allowed citizens to connect and mobilize like never before. The rise of a new model of internet-driven, people-powered politics is changing countries from Australia to the Philippines to the United States. Avaaz takes this model global, connecting people across borders to bring people powered politics to international decision-making.

that from the site avaaz.org sent to me by a friend on account of the petition for stopping yet another wave of Palestinian-Israeli violence.

but I say oh, really?? to the first line: it would seem that technology and the internet has plunked many fat asses down on chairs and completely de-mobilized potential good citizens in an effective reign of (p)assivity where only the fingers move, and the perspectival point-of-view is locked within a few centimeters of the face.

posted

thesis proposal :: Basics

Title

Sonic Presence Within The Networked Regime of Amplification

This research explores the relationship of (sonic)energy to social be-ing, technology, and the consequent possibilities for creative action.

Subject

Sound is energy, sound carries energy. Sonic energy is a product and a by-product of life. It forms one expression of organismic presence. It is one particular energized expression of our band-limited life that developed its particular characteristics through evolutionary processes. These processes are essentially structured around variations in the (spatial and temporal) concentrations and availabilities of energy. As one such expression, sound is employed as one means through which humans enhance their survivability. Amplification represents a particular model for what is essentially a life-process that operates on various energy flows, modulating their basic characteristics. How human collectives generate and interact with sonic energy governs a wide swath of their consequent techno-social interactions. This research is a distributed exploration of sound as a carrier of energy between the Self and the Other — as it is mediated through the globe-spanning network of techno-social amplification systems. Specifically, it will be a critical exploration of our contemporary techno-social terrain through the application of this model in a variety of creatively energized situations.

Outcomes

Formally, outcomes will include the dissertation, live/online performances, workshops, a blog, festival participation, and conference presentations. Through developing an energy-based model that amplification provides an armature for, it is my hope that this research will generate a powerful tool for analyzing and understanding the dynamic affects of technological systems on creative human engagement at all scales. This knowledge will be applied to facilitate actual situations for this engagement to be explored.

Keywords

amplification, sound, (sonic) energy, power, technology, techno-social systems, networks, continuum of relation, dialogue, collaboration, presence, sustainable creativity, social action, entropy, thermodynamics

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

thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts

Concerning Particular Methodologies

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

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

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

oblivion

month’s ending. All Hallows. images accruing in a form to share — 1996 (of this travelog) will be augmented first. complications with Berlin logistics, may throw off the November trip. and force a cancellation of Transmediale collaboration, hmmm. recalls the cafe9.net debacle in 1999.

end of the month, Friday.

finished with the DFW immersion. Oblivion is a brilliant set of stories, each one containing numerous positions, layers, points-of-view, (what to call the vantage of his voice/eye?). maybe the term channels applies. he has a multi-tasking eye, picking up information not just at the focal point of optics, but instead, immaculate macular generation. he has the recall, along with synthesis. imagination? springing from impression and spreading out through spaces which have not been mapped in that exact way. an example of voice-declaiming-self’s-model-of-cosmos. with a pivotal crux for the entire collection coming on page 326:

‘Who?’ She had ten weeks to live.

Wallace, D.F., 2005. Oblivion: stories, New York: Back Bay.

the deeply buried oblivion of our situation, now. everywhere. whenever. a weepy sad sketch of the human conditions. here, now. whenever. and a stiff finger punched into the chest of gloating cultural superiority. it all falls down.

how to push shaped impulse charges out, through the gate of psyche. and while pushing out, receive direct all the more.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

the last week

The IFKiK seminar ends in two side-steps which confirm the un-sustainability of that particular track of teaching—the holding to a(ny) model. It is a direct outcome of facilitating that the participants actually mutiny and go off on their own, rejecting authority and (s)lack, along with strong expressions of independence and a desire to find relevant subject areas for inquiry. When will this happen on a larger scale, across larger swaths of so-called learning spaces? There are clear limits to tolerance, this demonstrates, but can those limits be prescribed and stretched without pre-tension? Or does any pre-tension doom the process from moving into at least an abandoned form of random encounter, instead into mere buffoonery.

Well before the end it was already impossible to sustain a track, so that option fell by the way-side. At the same time, dialogues were undertaken with a ferocious concentration. This had the effect of gradually loosening any vestige of authority-in-relation in addition to any privileging of knowledge or know-ing. Dramatic developments. And as the (post)authoritarian protocol became internally incoherent, evolving too many possible interpretations, efforts focused on relinquishing traces of control that the protocol demanded and instead the formation of a new protocol exclusive of the facilitator. Did not compile the questions, such as they were. Relevancy appeared to be attained, but through a desire to move back to traditional models of relation (the text). Very interesting development. Will have to re-think that framework. Of all the thousands of possibly inspiring texts to consume, which will be the right combination? hmmm. A cook book might be the best starting point.

A little awkward with the stylized ending, but as a sample in the extreme spectrum of idiosyncratic confabulation, very interesting!, or … not. ! A formative de-briefing is hoped for, but that will have to arise independently in other temporal spaces. Perhaps easy to be cynical about the self and the situation, but human encounter arises in all forms, this being one of them. No qualitative judgment possible.

Cycling across town to Charlottenburg is fascinating, exhilarating, memorized now: the transitions, the corners, the sounds, the traffic. The tourists, the police, the Park, the City. The images and sounds are building up to something.

Head to Lichtenberg for Barbara and Susanne’s birthday party, in a green garden shaded by an enormous and very healthy apple tree, late into the slightly chilly evening, a fire of large pieces of timber that clearly were formerly from houses. 25×25 cm cross-section, pieces several meters long, with nails in them. Rafters from destroyed buildings. War relics. Or reliquaries. Incredible food and a Russian accordionist.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

The Regime of Amplification: A Primer

[ED: This text is essentially an extremely preliminary draft—written in Berlin, Germany in 2007-08—of my dissertation The Regime of Amplification.]

I decided to release this text in advance of any hard-copy publication, with another chapter nearing its final stages, and several intermediate chapters forming more concretely. The following is the original ‘final’ text, although there will be a significantly improved one in the years to come.

This speculative essay addresses the process of amplification which expresses itself at a wide range of scales and affects and which models a fundamental aspect of all human presence. It opens with a brief description of a prototypical amplifier, then frames life as the coherent self-organizing expression of energy embedded in a universal field of energy flows. It examines simple biological models of amplification and suggests possible reasons for amplification processes to exist. Narrowing its focus, it looks first at the human species, then the body, and then the collective social system as an operative field of amplification. It subsequently explores the Regime of Amplification as a general manifestation of the prototypical TSS (techno-social system) — a system whose goal is to maintain the viability of localized sub-sets of the species in the face of competition as well as continuous and universal change. Two specific examples — the radio and the military — are presented to simply illustrate the principles suggested. The conclusion reiterates the affects of techno-social amplification on individual be-ing as well as on the entire continuum of relation that the individual is a part of. It suggests some fundamental pathways of action which have an immediate detrimental affect on the hierarchic flows of the Regime.

This essay is built on the subject of one chapter in a book-in-progress titled “Energy of Being :: Dialogue of Creativity” which explores in greater depth many of the issues that are danced only Lightly around here.

KEY TERMS

TSS (techno-social system), Regime of Amplification, energy, amplification, attenuation, flow, continuum of relation, life-energy, life-time, evolutionary development, natural selection, self-organizing, radio, military systems, resonance, social energy bank, life-time=energy=life; attention=life-energy=life-time, feed-forward system, biochemical amplification, concentration, rarefaction, command-and-control … (to be continued)
more “The Regime of Amplification: A Primer”

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

nude studies

Palli’s MFA thesis project nude studies at Concordia is up and running…

Automated nude studies abstracted through geological intervention. Simultaneous geophysical interpretations of notions of nude-ness in the real-time of natural forces. Tectonic ripples through the core of the Earth.

data mining, cross-correlation of disparate data-sets, data interpretation. how to interpret incoming data. how to make sense? does any one making-sense method excel over another? if it’s measured by viability and sustainability, where does art fall? the survivors are the ones left behind. the winners transcend? waiting for the cataclysm. knowing the codes of seismicity, and models of the rumbling earth, and the consequences of it all, taking it onto the body maybe illustrates our disconnect from the elemental. but how to get it back, how to reveal the elemental? dig hands into the dirt!

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

spring

yes, spring does arrive. the chestnut tree outside the back windows rather suddenly bursts into a leafy presence that only the chestnut can express. added advantage is that it blocks the view into and out of the windows, replacing too-near humanity with … green.

We do not need to invent sustainable human communities. We can learn from societies that have lived sustainably for centuries. We can also model communities after nature’s ecosystems, which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. Since the outstanding characteristic of the biosphere is its inherent ability to sustain life, a sustainable human community must be designed in such a manner that its technologies and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life. — Fritjof Capra

posted
  • place: Kiel, Germany

garden house

tippling, tripling, toppling, tanking. what to say. when texts compile, and interesting meetings line up, and projects pile up, and such like. Kiel is busy, but folks are not feeling too well, sick baby, very sick parents, and suchlike. so I work on remote things, prepare for several upcoming performances, and network. clean out and organized the garden house, at least round one. the roof needs some repair, so, will have to look after that on a future visit. the Polish guys are really messy in their working habits. next round with the final remodel of the upstairs bathroom, hope that will change. yeah, helping out as possible.

posted
  • place: Lübeck, Germany

seminar

back in a classroom. talking about data – information – knowledge – intelligence – wisdom. signal-to-noise ratios. adaptability, chain-of-command, defined functions, trend analysis, long tail, lexis-nexus, The WELL, protocols and standards, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, social infrastructures, complexity, hierarchy, networks, order and disorder, economy of attention, business models, power, money, socially-defined exchange, globalization of culture, and so on. I am a teacher, I am only human.

posted
  • place: en route Kemnat - Esslingen - Hamburg - Kiel, Germany

middle age(s)

A jaunt in chilly weather down the hill to Esslingen, a self-proclaimed Middle Ages town, turns out to be quite nice, with a bracing hike to the Dicke Turm. A third round of Elizabeth’s Thanksgiving fare is called for! Jeff drops me at the airport in the early evening for the flight back north to Hamburg.

Car-plane-bus-taxi to a very empty Düppelstraße 15. I race around the house getting ready for the de Hoeksteen broadcast which ends up going so late that I finally sign off before my interview. Maybe the year-end broadcast in December will be better anyway. The half-dead PowerBook is really causing me some stress especially in situations like this — with the backLight on the LCD broken, I can only use the machine with an external monitor hooked up to it. I begin to survey what’s available on ebay. To replace the exact machine will be at least USD 600, but I will get a later model, as the 1.25 Ghz model seems to have a collective history of glitches (bad latch, this is the second LCD for the machine, and not to forget the dastardly motherboard breakdown in 2005. Better to get a 1.67 Ghz model which will run a bit more expensive — the prices are averaging around USD 800 for those. On the selling side, to have one of these models retain such a high resale value when three or four years old shows at least the perceived quality which they have over a comparable PC model. But technological instability just dogs my steps these days. iPod toasted, laptop fried, miniDV cam trashed. A consumptive electronics low point.

posted
  • place: Lübeck, Germany

e-culture and good food

Over in Lübeck, meet miga and then head to lunch with Andreas at Nui which I remember from the teaching at ISNM before. Had to get some outline of what is happening to the slowly sinking Titanic and what is required from me when I do a short course on e-culture in the spring.

Content: This seminar will explore the entire global regime of the trans-disciplinary field called “e-culture” as an intersection of digital technologies and cultural practices. Using case-studies to find out what is working and what is not, we will examine the technologies that most affect this sector, the political and economic policies that form it, and the social systems where it finds its place. As one model for the engagement of “new media’ technologies and social systems, “e-culture,” along with the “Creative Industries,” are the scene for much innovation, research, hype, and media reportage. This seminar will hunt for some truth by examining specific situations, precedent, technological infrastructures, and current trends.

Key phrases include: infotainment; web 2.0; economics of attention; locative media; wearable computing; technology globalization; media research; reception, storage, and transmission of culture; creative industries; cultural patrimony; cultural computing; corporate culture; jobs?; non-governmental organizations (NGO’s); ubicomp (ubiquitous computing); e-government; society of spectacle; globalization/dislocation of culture; Ikea for the Art Market; European Union effects; Soros Centers; networking; creative action; Road Warriors; First or Second Life?; the Finnish Model; future scenarios; borders and cultural difference; collaborative presences; and so on.

posted
  • place: Düsternbrooke, Kiel, Germany

waiting for T-Com

waiting for Deutsche Telekom is not unlike waiting for Godot. there is a tacit sense of inevitable loss and failure. of lack and dis-communications. or a return just at the singular moment when one has to run to the toilet, to the post, or just to the garden house to fetch a tool or to bring a case of empties onto the terrace. the T-Kom guy is waiting down the block with a pair of binoculars and a high-sensitivity microphone to catch these moments, whereupon he runs to the door, knocks Lightly, and runs back to his truck, driving off in a fury of absence, already composing in mind the scenario to type into his PDA. nobody home, case closed. ISDN? DSL? T-Online? Festnetz? upload? download? surfen? HotSpot Standorten? fahgettit. case closed. wait until next week. or so.

yeah, it’s frustrating, participating in this techno-social system when it doesn’t work. when it does, the frustration in sublimated by the satisfaction of social functioning.

a trip to the T-Com office in Kiel ends up not really helping, the pretty girl behind the counter only knows the scripts that she is taught and how to keep her shirt slightly unbuttoned so that her lacy black bra shows. so, no real problem-solving can be accomplished — on the contrary, she adds another layer of problems by issuing a modem which is incompatible with the data speeds of the service that Christian has ordered. crazy. and the way the corporation makes the usual stupid move of constructing a proprietary face/interface on the network. to cover the complexity with a non-functional layer of bullshit. more than annoying. and the worst is the propaganda of the advertising showing ubiquitously grinning models who clearly are not real people.

what else is new? another book Noise Media Language about (fluxus) (sound) (artist) Yasunao Tone put out by errant bodies — looks real interesting.

posted
  • place: Bremen, Germany

Uni-see

so it goes. pedagogic extravagances, personal liberties, dialogue, Light, revolution, action. and so on…

questions arising from the second round of dialogue pairs yesterday:

Why are you looking for a unified theory?

What is the significance of your octagonal earring (assuming it’s not just an accessory)?

How can the energy affect the technical model — for example, social networks in the internet?

Will we try to bring the course to a technical level in the meaning of morality or communications?

How can the energy in a field influence all points in it simultaneously — wouldn’t there be a problem with time?

How do expectations influence ourselves / our lives / our encounters with other human beings?

What if everyone shared John’s worldview, would that solve all (any?) of our problems?

If death is a catastrophe, is birth also?

Was this a day of crisis because there were different points of view in the room, or has that been a step forward?

Who can or should alter the permissions for one system to drain the energy of an other one to get stronger — without giving it back — in an unfair way: The elements of the system being drained or the elements of the unfair system?

Is there a lack of energy (flow) between the Self & the Other through digital communications?

Since we try to create a balance between “flow” and “block” in order to reach a good level, could we integrate “chaos” in this dialogue? What would the influence of chaos be?