Ed: For new subscribers, selecting the red dot in the middle of the map will start the audio sample which can then be controlled using the play-bar and volume/mute (speaker) icon.
on Anthracite Creek
Ed: For new subscribers, selecting the red dot in the middle of the map will start the audio sample which can then be controlled using the play-bar and volume/mute (speaker) icon.
any landscape …
Any landscape is so dense with evidence and so complex and cryptic that we can never be assured that we have read it all or read it aright. The landscape lies all around us, ever accessible and inexhaustible. Anyone can look, but we all need to see that it is at once a panorama, a composition, a palimpsest, a microcosm; that in every prospect there can be more and more that meets the eye.
Meinig, Donald W., and John Brinckerhoff Jackson, eds. The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Meinig’s allusion to holistic natural systems is quoted in an essay and exhibition on the historical “Drawings of the Great Colorado Survey”:
Huber, Thomas P. Hayden’s Landscapes Revisited: The Drawings of the Great Colorado Survey. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2016.
James Miller‘s concept of “living systems” emphasizes that all such systems—from cells to landscapes to societies—share common scale-independent patterns of organization and processes as well as divergent features. As initially articulated in an editorial by Miller in 1956 in the then-new journal Behavorial Science:
Our present thinking-which may alter with time-is that a general theory will deal with structural and behavioral properties of systems. The diversity of systems is great. The molecule, the cell, the organ, the individual, the group, the society are all examples of systems. Besides differing in the level of organization, systems differ in many other crucial respects. They may he living, nonliving, or mixed; material or conceptual; and so forth.
Miller, James Grier. “Editorial.” Behavioral Science 1, no. 1 (January 17, 2007): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/bs.3830010102.
In the context of landscapes, this approach aligns with systems thinking by focusing on how ecosystems, organisms, and human activities interact within larger networks, and are themselves comprised of smaller and smaller networks. A landscape may be seen as a living system with a complex of nested subsystems, where elements like nutrient cycles, energy flows, and information exchanges are interconnected. These interactions contribute to emergent properties and systemic behaviors, underscoring the need to consider the whole landscape when analyzing environmental changes and implementing management strategies. Augmenting or supplanting those more empirical methods, we believe that artistic, creative, imaginative, embodied, and other refined sensory-based processes can very effectively address and engage not only the astounding complexity, but the raw and inspiring beauty of these systems. Key to what may be a singular holistic ‘understanding’ of a landscape is focused and sustained observation that is aware of the scalar similarities and differences.
The original Hayden report from 1876:
Hayden, Ferdinand Vandeveer. “Annual Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories: Embracing Colorado and Parts of Adjacent Territories; Being a Report of Progress of the Exploration for the Year 1874.” Washington, DC: US Geological Survey, 1876.
Hayden recognized the profound value of William Henry Holmes‘ drawings, though he did not formally recognize the other artists who produced documentary drawings on the expeditions, He reserved most of his praise for William Henry Jackson, the photographer who documented so expansively the landscapes of the American West setting the creative precedent for the likes of Ansel Adams, Richard Misrach, Robert Adams, Willy Sutton, and the many others who followed.
totality 14:01:35
Short narrative: Driving (thanks, Steve!) from Franklin, Tenneessee starting at 07:45 on I-24 met with plenty of traffic at various choke-points until getting off at Vienna, Illinois, heading west. Made it to approximate centerline outside of Anna, Illinois just 25 minutes before totality, so wasn’t able to set up photo gear in a decent way.
Perfect weather, ~70F, 95% clear skies, some thin cirrus clouds that did not affect viewing at all. Some shadow bands, small and less distinct than in 2017, the final onset was very rapid. Spectacular diamond ring, then four minutes of totality with a massive hook-shaped prominence and others distributed around the disk, corona brilliant, easily observed out to maybe five lunar diameters, circum-horizon twiLight was gorgeous. And then it was over.
Many hours drive back in extensive traffic that intersected with a huge storm system threatening golf-ball-sized hail. Arrived back in Franklin at 23:00.
All things
I had this lined up as part of a draft for Rocktalk, but with only a week left at the j-o-b, I’ll use it here:
Nature will be reported. All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of his fellows and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds; the sky, of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints, which speak to the intelligent …. In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal.
The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative Men [Vol. 4] Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882., Emerson, Edward Waldo, 1844-1930.
the Universe is vast
Inability to focus on particulars that swarm the mind, fleeting. What to write about? Is there anything of substance to say? The world is so full of re-creations of an infinite multiverse: the universe is … whatever you want it to be. After that, it is what it is, or, perhaps, what it isn’t.
The human race consists of a small group of animals which for a small time has barely differentiated itself from the mass of animal life on a small planet circling round a small sun. The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogma with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of its existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are all alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in details is admitted: fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure. The Universe is vast.
[John] Dewey has never been appalled by the novelty of an idea. But it is characteristic of all established schools of thought to throw themselves into self-defensive attitudes. Refutation has its legitimate place in philosophic discussion: it should never form the final chapter. Human beliefs constitute the evidence as to human experience of the nature of things. Every belief is to be approached with respectful inquiry. The final chapter of philosophy consists in the search for the unexpressed presuppositions which underlie the beliefs of every finite human intellect. In this way philosophy makes its slow advance by the introduction of new ideas, widening vision, and adjusting clashes.
Dewey, John, Paul Arthur Schilpp, and Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds. The Philosophy of John Dewey. 3d ed. The Library of Living Philosophers, v. 1. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989.
Application: Anthropocene Resonance: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Our present geologic era, the Anthropocene, has already mobilized transversal and hybridized research approaches by calling attention to the patchy assemblages of our environmental encounters. This symposium celebrates and encourages such cross-pollination, and invites ecologists, technoscientists, environmental humanities scholars, biologists, data scientists, creative practitioners, green economists, ecofeminists, policy scholars, environmental designers, ethicists, and others to explore shared articulations of researching and visualizing the Anthropocene, and to develop concrete modes of working together on common problems.
Specifically, the symposium will engage scholarly and creative approaches to making climate change tangible, whether through data visualization, mapping, media, science communication, art installation, sonification, or other methods. The symposium will consist of short paper presentations, followed by working groups which will concretely address the challenges of working interdisciplinarily.
Submitted abstracts should be 300-500 words, and may address the following questions, among others:
- * How can the environment be documented, visualized, communicated, or presented in ways which are accurate, nuanced, and emotionally resonant?
- * In what ways has environmental change been documented, visualized, communicated, or presented historically?
- * How has the environment and environmental change been presented in mainstream media, and what are the effects of these approaches?
- * How can counter strategies be deployed to address existing problems in environmental depiction, visualization, or communication?
- * What are strategies for facilitating interdisciplinary work between researchers in science and technology and creative practitioners?
Changing the Course of Nature
This presentation circumscribes a personal creative praxis rooted in a vision of both Nature *and* the nature of reality as a dynamic configuration of energy flows. Guiding visual-sonic explorations of elemental energy flows, the author suggests that the human organism’s impact on its proximal and distal environment—expressed through the techno-social system—may be better understood using the scientific model of thermodynamics and entropy as a creative starting point. One simple, ongoing performance series “Changing the Course of Nature” demonstrates, onsite in the desert West of the US, how life at all levels expends the energy it consumes and thus changes … everything. A brief sketch covering a ‘natural history’ of sound is included.
John Hopkins is a media artist and learning facilitator. He holds a transdisciplinary creative practices PhD from La Trobe University/University of Technology Sydney; an MFA from the University of Colorado Boulder (where he studied with renown experimental film-maker, Stan Brakhage); and a BSc in Geophysical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. His collaborative trans-disciplinary research and teaching explores issues surrounding sustainable creative practices, ‘big-picture’ system views, networked and tactical media, distributed and community-based DIY & DIWO processes, and Temporary Autonomous Zones. His international media arts practice explores the role of energy in techno-social systems and the effects of technology on energized human encounter. He has taught across more than 20 countries and 60 higher education situations. He is currently organizing the data space of the Colorado Geological Survey while solving the challenges of transforming geo-scientific data into knowledge that the wider public might engage. You may track his processes at https://neoscenes.net/blog/.
Online Resources:
CV/Resumé
energy (research sketches around energy/thermodynamics)
CLUI Residency (a recent residency with the Center for Land Use Interpretation)
An ongoing sonic (field recording) performance series Changing the Course of Nature
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.
all watched over …
Who can resist the ominous simplicity of Brautigan’s All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace?
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
passing note
500 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile flying
250 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile driving
These are very approximate/average numbers and are affected by the type of plane/vehicle and its relative efficiency.
We are changing the course of nature. Or, more precisely, without life on this planet, nature would be different. We are life in this place. Or we are life, as life is a perturbation of basal flows. An always-inchoate flow, but never completely still. This is all we are, a way for the cosmos to increase entropy, perhaps, as some believe, the best way for the cosmos to increase entropy, to wind down, into a cold and silent nothing.
But it’s all in the language, isn’t it? And even the language needs to get shucked, ripped from its stalk, tossed away to reveal and remind of the truth that the word is not the phenomena that it de-scribes …
Back to:
All Roads Lead To Rome.
as principle.
The questions are, What is Rome, and What is a Road?
et cetera
Nine km. in three days, not bad — it’s actually getting easy — I need to do more sprinting and drills, but just moving faster is best, feeling the greater resistance of the water and consequent speed. That and watching the sky and listening to the birds on the walk from my office to the pool. The sky was exceptionally dark and clear last night, it got down to maybe 40F, pretty cool. Totally dreaming about being in the bush, as they say here, in the back-country, the wilds, the wilderness. To watch the stars sink right to the black edge of the world. Squatting, eyes tearing in the chill condensate of mid-night. The Southern Cross is practically at Zenith now which seems strange, but at a similar latitude as in the north in winter, Polaris also reaches quite close to Zenith. Pity no chance of catching a good sky on this tour. Now too many folks to visit with before possible departure, too many things to do, including whether not to leave again.
The Cosmic Spirit
To every form of being is assigned
An active principle:—howe’er removed
From sense and observation, it subsists
In all things, in all natures: in the stars
Of azure Heaven, the unenduring clouds,
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters and the invisible air.
Whate’er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing, or with evil mixed:
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude; from link to link
It circulates, the soul of all the worlds.
— Wordsworth. Excursion. Book VI, 1-15.
readying for a perambulation around the cosmos at any moment. readying for the moment of full-on change. readying for now.
do, do not
In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours. — Ayn Rand
de-Facebooking
This space accreting, while the gradual shutting-down of FaceBook proceeds. After the Lightning trip from Yuma through Calexico on northward to the Bay Area and back 48 hours later with my original road-tripping partner, Gary, sheesh: 36 years compresses into careers, children, life-trajectories, and gas prices. That and a running dialogue on the nature of the cosmos and human relation.
Regarding the FaceBook wastage, well, it seems quite right for the moment, no regrets. When only a minuscule fraction of hundreds of ‘friends’ notice the departure. Mostly the ones who do are also ones who find the whole thing tiresome and distinctly artificial. The ones with thousands of friends notice nothing in that sea of being known and wanted, busy as they pump their status (statii?) by the moment. After being an early adopter, and a participant for a time, it does seem to be only an accumulation of attention-sucking life-dross. A prime example of how media can absorb our attention without limit — making consumable, for consumption, the textually and visually reduced detritus of be-ing. And presenting that as a worthy object of a sizable chunk of our social life-time. Of the same dimension as the proliferation of bottom, side, and top overlay graphics on cable teevee screens.
I discover that I have suffered no irretrievable loss as I squeeze down the feeds (media consumables, eh?) to nothing. No you-tube fragments, no important NYT articles, no photos of vacation travel, no banal ego-feeding status updates. I suffer no gaping existential holes in my existence on the planet. Down to 200 friends, slowly deleting all content, connection, and demarcation in the account so it will end as a shriveled husk, a dried dust mote falling from the data cloud.
road :: amplifier / the difference?
The amplifier/road difference would sound something like this:
I defined the amplifier as a concept which exists at many different scales and in both ‘natural’ and human-dominated systems (though that particular dialectic is a problematic one). It is a system which concentrates (and by default attenuates) energy flows. It is a defined set of pathways for that energy to flow along. (a life-form is an amplifier!)
(As an example, fundamental physical laws, such as the set of principles—gravitational attraction, strong/weak nuclear forces, EM radiation, thermodynamics, etc.—’govern’ the process of stellar evolution and ‘supply’ the ‘protocols’ for the ‘expression’ of Light energy (radiation) in a highly specific and concentrated form (compared to the availability of that same energy in any random location in the universe).
In essence, humans are simply harnessing these physical laws to form their own pathways of energy flow. Indeed we can do nothing else, as these laws govern the entire observed and implied universe. So the difference between the amplifier and the protocols that ‘define’ it may only be question of articulation — that is, those physical laws, in human terms, simply exist (for us to discover and articulate over time). The protocols arise as humans initiate articulations of the extant energy flows within which we simply are. So the protocol is, again, merely, a human (socio-linguistic) reduction of observed and extant phenomena. We cannot do anything counter to those phenomena that those laws are ascribed to. However, using these reductive protocols/formula, we set up a wide variety of sub-systems which, cumulatively, are our techno-social systems — complex systems of re-routed energies. As soon as energy is re-routed, you have an amplifier situation because you consequently have a concentration/attenuation of flows. An amplifier is perhaps merely the condition of the existence of a concentration of energies. (this does get into the question of the role of, for example, gravity as a ‘protocol’ which drives the coalescing of energized matter in the universe — or is gravity actually increasing the entropy of that matter?)
change
The argument may be made that a fence, a window, an article of clothing, a wall are — one-and-the-same — deflectors of the extant natural flow of energies out there. They represent a set of energy deflectors imposed by humans on their environs.
The other issue, tied to this is the production of waste (unusable) heat energy which impinges on a locality after the use of high energy sources which are subsequently rendered into usable and unusable forms of energy with varying efficiency. The primary source of this unusable energy is in the actual production and maintenance of the energy deflector systems: making and installing a fence, fabricating a window (glass being an extremely energy-intensive manufacturing process), building a wall, a building, a dam. more “change”
the leisure class … (at 11.11.10, 11:11)
The erection of class/caste protocols (another harsh historical judgment in the midst of the industrial age):
Entrance into the leisure class lies through the pecuniary employments, and these employments, by selection and adaptation, act to admit to the upper levels only those lines of descent that are pecuniarily fit to survive under the predatory test. And so soon as a case of reversion to non-predatory human nature shows itself on these upper levels, it is commonly weeded out and thrown back to the lower pecuniary levels. In order to hold its place in the class, a stock must have the pecuniary temperament; otherwise its fortune would be dissipated and it would presently lose caste. Instances of this kind are sufficiently frequent. The constituency of the leisure class is kept up by a continual selective process, whereby the individuals and lines of descent that are eminently fitted for an aggressive pecuniary competition are withdraw from the lower classes. In order to reach the upper levels the aspirant must have, not only a fair average complement of the pecuniary aptitudes, but he must have these gifts in such an eminent degree as to overcome very material difficulties that stand in the way of his ascent. Barring accidents, the nouveaux arrivés are a picked body. more “the leisure class … (at 11.11.10, 11:11)”
work, labor, action
Arendt‘s tripartite approach to the sociopolitical — Work, Labor, Action — in “The Human Condition” suggests the expenditure or the flow of energy. All three are intertwined within the do-ing, the be-ing of life, and in the sense that they are all embodied expressions of life-energy, they are equal, divided only by the particularities of the pathways of expression of those energies. She begins, I believe correctly, with viva activa as her source: the active, activated life. However, she does not explicitly posit a connection between viva activa and the source of the possibility for an active lif, that is: ones life-energy (sourced in the energized thermodynamic flows of life itself). These impulses towards the social structures of collective life must have a source, an activated well-spring that drives the cumulative social (and life) dynamic. The question of the source is perhaps more important than the ultimate expression of the source.
more “work, labor, action”
playing with the words
An engineer who has given us the entire…
Un-named engineers …
Engineer as a causative agent…
From Middle English engin < Old French engin (“skill”, “cleverness”, “war machine’”) < Latin ingenium (“innate or natural quality, nature, genius, a genius, an invention, in LL. a war-engine, battering-ram”) < ingenitum, past participle of ingignere (“to instil by birth, implant, produce in”); see ingenious. Engine originally meant ‘ingenuity, cunning’ which eventually developed into meaning ‘the product of ingenuity, a plot or snare’ and ‘tool, weapon’.
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”
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”
Empty Infinity
Without beginning, without end,
Without past, without future.
A halo of light surrounds the world of the law.
We forget one another, quiet and pure, altogether powerful and empty.
The emptiness is irradiated by the light of the heart and of heaven.
The water of the sea is smooth and mirrors the moon in its surface.
The clouds disappear in blue space; the mountains shine clear.
Consciousness reverts to contemplation; the moon’s disk rests alone.
Wilhelm, R., 1962. The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, New York, NY: Harvest / HBJ Book.
Researching more of Wilhelm’s powerful translation work that continues to widen an opening door into an ultimately livable space. The dorsal/ventral (toku – nin or Circulation of Light) breathing technique elucidated here — even when practiced with flawed concentration — has an immediate and profound affect on the state of the system. I am even surprised with the intensity of change which ensues. The body is straighter, uplifted, and the balance of body heat has shifted drastically — the chronically over-heated head is cooler, the feet and hands warmer. This shift has not yet directly impacted rising gall (yang) in surprise (reactive) situations, but when the breathing becomes first nature, it appears to have the potential to do that. The base-line of calm has shifted for the better. Will have to consult Heiji about these affects. A daily practice of some minutes, with as many reminders shot through the many unconscious moments of non-breathing, seems to be an auspicious start. There is no going back on this discovered knowledge.
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?
musings before a roadtrip
Leaving aside the refined mapping of experience-once-removed. And instead, gathering experience first hand, in the moment, where circumspection is wistful, wasteful, or even dangerous.
Music on the road. Traveling minstrels, buskers, harmonica-playing hobos. playing for people on the road, or playing whilst on the road. Meeting at the roadhouse. Beyond the city limits. What goes down when humans engage beyond the control of the proper social order. What goes on outside the ordered flows of town. Interstitial in the sense that between towns lie the open roads. bandits, women and men of loose moral fortitude, and wild animals. The space of chaotic flow.
We suspect that even though travel in the modern world seems to have been taken over by the Commodity — even though the networks of convivial reciprocity seem to have vanished from the map — even though tourism seems to have triumphed — even so — we continue to suspect that other pathways still persist, other tracks, unofficial, not noted on the map, perhaps even “secret” — pathways still linked to the possibility of an economy of the Gift, smugglers’ routes for free spirits, known only to the geomantic guerrillas of the art of travel.
As a matter of fact, we don’t just “suspect” it. We know it. We know there exists an art of travel. — Hakim Bey, Overcoming Tourism
What is the nature of what is feared outside the purview of human controlled flows? Is it merely nature? It is the presence of (or the risk of) death — that singular element that lies completely beyond human control, for ever? It cannot be erased from the wild kernel of being. Some seek the thrill of facing it, some hide in states of paranoid control to keep it as far away as possible, backing away only to fall over a precipice unseen behind. Religion is the construct that irrationally rationalizes the presence of the unknown, of death, and of corrupt social order.
… back to the road …
The body of speed. (hunt and/or be hunted). Movement is the first escape from death. Running to safety, to the nearest tree. Running to fetch the weapon that you left at home. Running for the crowd so that the odds of getting eaten are marginally lowered. Running fast. Running to change places. Running to make a moving target. Running for help! Running to the Library!
The Book as fuel for keeping warm and The Book as weapon: dictionaries and encyclopedias work best for both purposes. Book as pillow. Book as door-stop. Book as object sensed orbiting centers of cultural gravity. Textual asteroids and debris. Escape that field.
The Book as tool for enhancing procreative potential and staving off death. Rather, Books on how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading about how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading-while-driving. Speed. And then it comes. uuuuuhhh.
nah. gotcha, I’m outta here, step on it, hit the gas, burn some rubber, spray some gravel in ‘is face…
Food, Energy, and Society
For most of the time that humans have inhabited the earth, their prime source of power has been their own muscle power. …
Early additional sources of power included human slaves and domesticated animals. The hunting/gathering societies were helped when an extra food gatherer or hunter could join in the task of securing food. Likewise, the labor intensiveness of primitive agriculture increased both the need for and the usefulness of slave and animal labor. …
A slave or extra hunter, of course, would have to be fed. However, two hunters could kill more than twice as much game as a single hunter could kill alone. In this way, additional labor provided a greater return in energy than the energy input required for its maintenance. (p. 68)
Food, Energy, and Society, Pimentel, D., Pimentel, M., Third Edition, Taylor And Francis Group, Boca Raton, Florida, 2008. Food, Energy and Society, [Pimentel, D., Pimentel, M., (revised edition), University Press of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 1996]
I haven’t gotten access to the most current (2008) edition of this major collation of numbers, but the 1996 version is recent enough for the extrapolation process to be framed and the principles to be clearly demonstrated. Unfortunately that extrapolation reveals a worsening situation than they originally laid out (or imagined!) in 1979. With a detailed quantitative analysis of the (energy) costs of all eras and types of food production, as well as an examination of pesticide use, water, biodiversity, and soil resource issues, the separate chapters are full of numbers and comparisons which are remarkable in extent and sobering in their basic message. It would be possible to verify the extensive research in detail by tracking down the fifty-pages of references, but the message is simple: the human species is exerting an ever-increasing energy drain on the global environment merely to subsist, and there are definitely better and worse ways to marginally affect the situation. Humans tend to be wasteful — but any life-form causes this process of entropic waste (energy) production merely by living — it is not an avoidable condition. It appears now that the problems are of such a wide-scale, and the solutions are presently so haphazard (as applied by nation-states rather than through some trans-national instrument), that the inevitable upward geometric curves (population, resource consumption, environmental degradation, etc) will reach their limit. Those curves as they exist in the mathematical domain have no real upward limit and may approach infinity asymptotically. This would represent the system with infinite energy reserves. The earth, taken as a sub-system of the cosmos, is finite, and so are the energy resources it makes available for human use. more “Food, Energy, and Society”
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”
dipping into Ellul
Morning reading, sparking off Jacques Ellul’s classic, The Technological Society, where he attempts the first comprehensive definition and discussion of technology as something that pervades and underlies social formation(s). He also discusses a distinct relationship between the machine and technology, where the machine is the most important and obvious aspect of technology; where mechanization “transforms everything it touches into a machine;” but where technology is a cumulative way (perhaps expression?) of integration of the machinic into the social fabric, it is represented by a continuous re-formation of the (human) life-form(s) to the techno-social system. Without this impelling force, humans, as simply another evolutionary life-form expression, would not have arrived at where they are in this moment.
more “dipping into Ellul”
the past
back at yet another airport — north, east, south, west? future or past?
The Past
Let no one say the past is dead.
The past is all about us and within.
Haunted by tribal memories, I know
This little now, this accidental present
Is not the all of me, whose long making
Is so much of the past. Tonight here in suburbia as I sit
In easy chair before electric heater,
Warmed by the red glow, I fall into dream:
I am away
At the camp fire in the bush, among
My own people, sitting on the ground,
No walls around me,
The stars over me,
The tall surrounding trees that stir in the wind
Making their own music,
Soft cries of the night coming to us, there
Where we are one with all old Nature’s lives
Known and unknown,
In scenes where we belong but have now forsaken.
Deep chair and electric radiator
Are but since yesterday,
But a thousand camp fires in the forest
Are in my blood.
Let none tell me the past is wholly gone.
Now is so small a part of time, so small a part
Of all the race years that have moulded me.
— Oodgeroo Noonuccal
sundry
catching up on bureaucratic things before the uni slows down for the summer.
testing the turbulent flow of cream in tea despite the good-natured jiving from the house-mates about the (my!) barbaric custom of cream in black tea. the house becomes a sanctuary from the oscillating heat which cracks 40C. but days later drops to 15C, very strange, just don’t have a handle on it. and meanwhile, spot Orion from Shar’s roof — it’s upside down (Orion, that is), feet up, sword rampant, very disorienting.
Into The Cool
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, a foundation of Western science, circumscribes the role of energy and order in the observed behaviors of the cosmos. (It’s not just a recommendation, it’s The Law!) Into the Cool is an elegant and well-researched book that makes the linkage between this law and the fundamentals of life as a dynamic energy re-organizing process. I was frequently using the image of concentration and rarefaction in my exploration of energy-as-driving metaphor for the cosmos at all scales. This is a classic error — mistaking the stasis of Yin and Yang for the actuality that those ‘conditions’ were merely perihelion points in a dynamic process symbolized by the taijitu. Rarefaction and concentration are dynamic and reciprocal conditions in a non-equilibrium thermodynamic system at all times and at all scales — a sustained condition that can only be ‘resolved’ by the application of a theoretical limit on the system which makes it a closed and tending-to-equilibrium system. With the reciprocal maxim Nature abhors a gradient, the authors frame the issues surrounding energy and life. That is, observing the cosmos at all scales, it is noted that entropy, or the gradual descent into complete isotropic ‘disorder’ is a tendency — at the same time there is a tendency for ordering driven by gravity (and the rest of the fundamental interactions of physics). Defining life, and consequently, defining the role of life in this dynamic interplay of processes is essentially the same goal. Life could perhaps be defined by that which causes anisotropy to develop in the cosmos. Certainly anisotropy is a necessary condition for life — necessary but perhaps not sufficient — although sufficiency, well, the existence of anisotropy at all scales plays a crucial role in life — without it the universe would be exhibit no difference and would thus not be comprehensible nor could anything happen.
The continuously-variable energy fabric upon which all is drawn in may not logically be sufficient, but in the poetic schema of be-ing and presence, I would say that it was sufficient.
Into the Cool: Energy Flow Thermodynamics and Life, Schneider, Eric D. and Dorion Sagan, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005.
on participation, part one
I was telling someone the other day that I am a good participant. I know how to jump into a situation and contribute in a way that is sensitive to the ambient flows that are happening at the same time as clearly manifesting a unique set of contributing flows. Perhaps a bit too conservative in respecting the paths of those ambient flows, but it’s probably better to be slightly more conservative than liberal. Uhh, such loaded terms. Useless words after they are so distorted by socio-politics of certain cultural configurations. Although it is ironic to note that here in Australia their political meaning is in (antipodal) opposition. Which simply emphasizes the idiocy of politics (as Peter Tosh observed once: Politics, “poli” means people, “ticks” are parasites, politics, parasites on the people). Words, language, always tends to go through this reification process. Followed by a morphing process when the reified language becomes overwhelmed when attempting to explicate new situations or when circumscribing known situations with a different point-of-view. The reified structures will be bolstered and protected until usage simply makes them redundant.
more “on participation, part one”
more Buber
Human dialogue, therefore, although it has its distinctive life in the sign, that is in sound and gesture (the letters of language have their place in this only in special instances, as when, between friends in a meeting, notes describing the atmosphere skim back and forth across the table), can exist without the sign, but admittedly not in an objectively comprehensible form. On the other hand an element of communication, however inward, seems to belong to its essence. But in its highest moments dialogue reaches out even beyond these boundaries. It is completed outside contents, even the most personal, which are or can be communicated. Moreover it is completed not in some ‘mystical’ event, but in one that is in the precise sense factual, thoroughly dovetailed into the common human world and the concrete time-sequence. more “more Buber”
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?
(in) no time
Willie Wagtails (Rhipidura leucophrys), Minors (Manorina melanocephala) …
that entry stopped there. no time to observe and note things when constantly consuming texts and coping with the daily movements. it is highly inefficient to commute for this kind of work. research is 90% online, and moving between home and the office sucks up at least 1.5 hours a day. strange that it is able to absorb so much time when it’s just a short distance away. walking takes about 40 minutes each way, though, and waiting for the bus and the slow crawl down George Street is tedious. I find that the mind-space that I take on when in that mode is very unproductive and deadening. I observe, while hearing is constantly assaulted, occasionally some energizing encounters, but the locally dominant Asian sense of personal space I find deeply conflicting with my own. and the reflexive sensory protocols I developed through the time in the desert and mountains has been thoroughly destroyed — no stars to see, not even planets, and it is only in the 16th-floor office that its really possible to watch the weather develop albeit through heavy windows that cannot be opened and are filthy on the exterior (I cleaned the large inside pane of the window immediately over my desk, much to the amusement of several of the other grad students). optical clarity — if I’m forced to look at the world through a glass filter, it’s got to be clean!
more “(in) no time”
energy/complexity
Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be. The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about through the “crash” that many fear — a genuine collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population. The alternative is the “soft landing” that many people hope for — a voluntary change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption. This is a Utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology. — Joseph A. Tainter
There is much to explore in the ideas around organizational complexity/simplicity correlated with high/low energy requirements for a system — essentially basic thermodynamics (it always comes down to this). If the wider (widest) scale of human systems could scale social complexity down, the energy requirements would experience a correlative drop. But this is a very substantial IF. And it would mean that the energy reach of the average individual would consequently contract. And human natures seem to preclude any sacrifice of control that is a crucial part of the existing order. China fancies itself victorious, clambering over other nations to arrive soon at the top of the influential complexity heap, but it will soon discover that the price for this status is, literally, high. And it too, as a complex system, will gradually implode again. Though likely not after extracting, demanding, a high flow, or tribute, as the US is now doing, from the global system. That flow comprising the over-consumption and thus concentration of widely distributed materials which now, in their post-use state leave the globe energetically worse off. In the end this is not an issue of nation-state guilt, it is simply the evolutionary state of the tool-wielding bipedal mammalian species. The (over-consuming) developed world crosses many demographic and geographic borders, while likewise the under-consumers are widely distributed.
The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective, the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the planet’s energy balance. — David Price
Wholeness and the Implicate Order
Finally getting down to some David Bohm texts that I’ve been wanting to absorb for years but never had the time or access. I had a short correspondence with his widow some years back for the purpose of responding to the Dialogue essay and subsequently hosting it on the neoscenes third-party texts area. After Buber, Bohm was the first to show up as a source on my dialogue radar, an influential one at that, when a contemporary concept of dialogue-praxis is examined. Bohm has a powerful and holistic approach, literally, grounded in a worldview based on his interpretation of Quantum, the development of which he was an integral player. I am more than encouraged — inspired would be the correct word — by his approach, rigor, and mapping of a powerful foundational approach to human relation both with the cosmos and with each Other.
Also crucial to his view is the problematic nature of language as it exists (English, specifically), suggesting that the (tyranny) of subject-verb-object be replaced with a structure that emphasizes the verb — emphasizing action over thing (reflecting back to ancient Hebrew as did David Abram in The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World where the written language included only the consonants, and vowels—which necessarily need expiration, a projection of the spirit to say—were introduced by the spoken reader, infusing the word with the life-spirit of breath.
The shifting of English that Bohm suggests illustrates how language informs/forms ones worldview as Benjamin Whorf promoted with his concept of linguistic relativity (which has always seemed obvious to me, an awareness perhaps brought about through the process of photographic abstraction of the world).
Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Bohm, David, Routledge, London, 2002
The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world. — Wilhelm von Humboldt
Then the question of how to deal with all these books at once? Where to read them, how to take notes, how much to read in any one at a time, and such. Reading in the evening before sleeping isn’t very good, although restful. Mid-afternoon is optimal, but carving out several hours from the daily to-do grind makes that difficult. Having a space in the CMAI office is very helpful now, as there are more comfortable chairs. The collective grad offices are too noisy and busy. Dislocating to Bronte or a cafe elsewhere is possible, but not time-effective if only for reading. Ach!, the questions of methodology …
Energy and economic myths
Energy and Economic Myths, Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, Elsevier Science & Technology, 1977. ISBN 0080210562
Georgescu-Roegen critiques the mechanistic basis for much economic theory (which predominantly focuses on the movement of goods — a state which, thermodynamically, appears as a reversible process — and one which leads, at least conceptually if not in fact to the infinite cycle from production to consumption). It would appear that our current situation is the result of that infinite cycle occurring in a locally finite system.
This book leads to:
More heat than light : economics as social physics, physics as nature’s economics, Mirowski, Philip, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN: 0521350425 (hardback)
and ends up at this reflection from Borges:
It is useless to answer that reality is also orderly. Perhaps it is, but in accordance with divine laws — I translate: inhuman laws — which we never quite grasp. Tlön is surely a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men.
In the introduction Mirowski inspires as he details his struggle to build a conceptual and actual bridge between physics and economics. Understanding that economics is an important dimensional descriptor of the techno-social system is a nice advance. Although the number of economists who have made this connection are few, and the bulk of the discipline are still mired in juggling abstractions. It’s important to realize that the abstracted metrics of economy are abstracted from something and that something is energized matter. He extends the argument, marking the parallel between the terms value in economics and energy in physics. And later, he develops the concept of energy as one critical to understanding economics, period. This is a good find indeed! And it might end up, by studying the principles of the conservation of energy too much and I will end up a conservative. (No chance of that, as no one ends up as anything but energy anyway…) Actually, bringing thermodynamics into the picture would radically change the nature and theories of market economics both on the right and on the left.
On pages 56-57 there is a symmetric coffee-colored ring, a primitive of a Rorschach test, and on 58-59, some bits of roll-your-own tobacco. The last record of being checked out was 1998. More than a decade ago. Not too much interest in these approaches within the traditional canon.
And later, on to the indeterminacy of human tendencies towards abstracted (but sometimes brilliant) reason, in describing his ideas on electromagnetic fields:
The substance here treated must not be assumed to possess any of the properties of ordinary fluids except those of freedom of movement and resistance to compression. It is not even a hypothetical fluid which is introduced to explain actual phenomena. It is merely a collection of imaginary properties which may be employed for establishing certain theorems in pure mathematics in a way more intelligible for many minds … I wish merely to direct the mind of the reader to mechanical phenomena which will assist him in understanding the electrical ones. All such phrases in the present paper are to be considered as illustrative, not explanatory. In speaking of the Energy of the field, however, I wish to be understood literally. — James Clerk Maxwell
changing the course of nature
Verde Springs
I join Joanne on a half-day excursion to Verde Springs at the headwaters of the Verde River. she is an old acquaintance from the mid-80’s when she and Mike led biology and geology field trips at the local community college — I was on a memorable week-long one to Death Valley in the winter of 1985. the hike today is part of local Earth Day activities, although she has been leading these monthly for the last year as part of the public awareness campaign that the Center for Biological Diversity is mounting in opposition to the plans for massive groundwater mining by the towns of Prescott, Prescott Valley, and Chino Valley. a representative of the Nature Conservancy was along as well to introduce the land that they recently bought protecting one of the most sensitive areas of the riparian headwaters. there was an eclectic group of folks from a thirteen-year-old to several couples who’ve retired to Prescott. more “Verde Springs”
nature, natUral
Nature?
That ridiculous,
undifferentiated
conglomerate;
it exists,
it clowns
as vain reflection;
—-it does not live.
Nature,
with its Latin reverberation,
as transportation,
as birth,
yet incises,
knots
a passage.
(juice and syllable)
(bone and ganglion)
An.
the Four, the Five; the Sink, the Skink…..
wow
bow-wow
and a swoon.
what an exhaustion,
what a prolongation,
what a
yeast-explosion
(souffle)
(implosion)
yesterday
was.
The Past is not dead;
it’s not even past.
Recently,
often enough,
my body has been a
contagious site
for arduous,
tenacious
spirits
for collisions,
elisions, litterings,
erosions,
floods
of certain humours,
certain histories.
Very much
in the Locus
of Mallarme and Naufrage,
Coup de des.
This “present” circumstance
(of intellectual inertia)
is untenable,
is impossible.
It Is Time—-
to cut the Strings
(of the Violin)—-
and to way with the giving Storm,
across the gravelled
waves.
The rigour,
the balance,
the elastic effervescence
of the Sycamore
surpass
every aspect
of the House.
No Need of Nature,
No Need of Art for This—-.
Franz
conceives of a “man”
who awakens in “his” bed
with the body of a scarab
(Old Egypt and its Love
of Puns);
a “man” who yet
(miraculously)
“retains” his human head.
What
might we say of a man,
who neither sleeps nor wakes;
who finds himself
inside
a Mural-Wall,
Wall-inside-a-Forest,
Land
travelling at Sea?
Wall: as Compass.
Forest: as its Clock…..
A….Reader? ….Reader-Hand?
Aestival,
estual,
Rain-Hand
Palus-Reeder?
(As with
*I Ching*—-
Biting-through-the-Sack….
What
kind of Sky?)
An.
Qi approaching the Equinox
go to bed reading of Qi in Ted J. Kaptchuk’s treatise on Chinese medicine and wake up early from a deep dream where I was working with a group of boisterous and engaged young people who are somehow brought together by the impulse of Barack Obama. my immediate thought upon waking is why does a political figure enter my dreams? social action is important, sure, along with an interest in community dynamics, but a politician (community organizer none-the-less)? somewhat disturbing, though that thought is outweighed by the energy of the scenario. I suppose I am missing teaching. there will be opportunities for that in Oz, although I will keep it highly restricted to workshops rather than term courses. nothing should get in the way of the appointed task.
the Qi discussion illustrates the absolute difficulty in framing a concept in the language — the specific social protocol — within which the concept did not arise. the fundamental problem of translation. and in this case, translation of a term that is so formative to any worldview built on it that if one adopts that specific term, it will map, literally, where one stands in the world. and the ensuing conclusion that the adoption of another social protocol, language, precipitates a shift in worldview. no surprise there.
one global ‘solution’ to this issue especially in regard to fundamentals like Qi or energy (noting that even here I am making no one-to-one correspondence between the two!), when ‘comparing’ fundamentals, is to consider that each human individually is observing the world, and, at the same time, the social collective that they are participating in exerts an impressive synergy on all these points-of-view, and generates a collectively determined world view. this is the dominant social protocol, their language. Both the individual and collective world view are reductive apprehensions of essentially the same phenomena — that of be-ing in the world — seen from the particular point of view of that individual or collective. Of course, there are the instances where the worldview of the collective is impressed on the individual when the individual is forced to sacrifice personal autonomy to the collective — often through violence or threat of violence. it becomes a deep issue of personal autonomy or idiosyncrasy versus the power of the collective and where to set the line.
… the unusual difficulty in making Qi intelligible in modern Western philosophy suggests that the underlying Chinese metaphysical assumption is significantly different from the Cartesian dichotomy between spirit and matter…. (Furthermore) the continuous presence in Chinese philosophy of the idea of Qi as a way of conceptualizing the base structure and function of the cosmos, despite the availability of symbolic resources to make an analytical distinction between spirit and matter, signifies a conscious refusal to abandon a mode of thought that synthesizes spirit and matter as an undifferentiated whole. The loss of analytical clarity is compensated by the reward of imaginative richness. The fruitful ambiguity of Qi allows philosophers to explore realms of being which are inconceivable to people constricted by Cartesian dichotomy …. Qi, in short, seems inadequate to provide a philosophical background for the development of empirical science as understood in a positivistic sense. What it does provide, however, is a metaphorical mode of knowing, an epistemological attempt to address the multidimensional nature of reality by comparison, allusion, and suggestion. — Tu Wei-ming in Confucian Though
furthermore, the adoption of another linguistic naming system or protocol represents the potential of seeing the world anew. at the same time as it represents a separation from the dominant or previous system. this is an essential feature of the process of immigration, this identity shift that comes through a (linguistic) re-naming the world. but it is also inherent in the process of adoption of any protocol or technology that is produced and imposed on the individual.
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!
Thompson (NOT Fred)
The Army Corps of Engineers with its national system of dams and levees has shown us what happens when the military-industrial approach in which Man dominates nature is put to work in eliminating wet lands where wild birds gather and sedimentary islands build up to break ocean surges. This form of engineering is the same kind of military-industrial thinking that salinates the soil with center-pivot agriculture and drains the Ogalala aquifer to replace biodiversity with monocrops held in place with the chemical warfare of pesticides. And the animal prisoners taken in this war are held in place in the concentration camps of feedlots and drugged with antibiotics and growth hormones to prepare them for mass slaughter. Their carcasses are then processed in fast food fuel stations along highway strips that are the same ugly clutter of signs and stops from Anchorage to Miami. Our President [Bush] is comfortable with this mentality because for him nature is basically a golf course or a ranch — or a national park turned into a country club where folks can burn off stress by speeding over the snow while polluting the air of Yellowstone with gas-guzzling skidoos. — William Irwin Thompson, essays
fixed memories
Memories. how to surface, how to frame, how to recreate. images, in the process of uncovering three decades of work primarily unseen. thousands of images of friends, places, strangers, objects, situations, events. a very small percentage are so far away in mind that what, who they are, is now unknown. so, looking through the external sources, the calendar, the email archive, other images, the travelog. to set a location. but some cannot be deduced. where was I? who are those people? what’s going on?
And then the questions, are the images interesting, compelling, usable?
and to the Wordsworth reference:
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers: Little we see in nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be a pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathe’d horn. — William Wordsworth
busy
day starts with French toast, frisbee a bit later, things that Loki and I share over the history of sporadic presence. cut my hair off last night, making a pile in the middle of the living room floor. clean it up. clean up the kitchen, and other details. so it goes.
make a museum tour as well to the National Museum to see the new Steina Vasulka installation which is monumental and fits the space perfectly. then on to the Kjarval and the Hafnarhusid as I discovered as of February this year they are free to the public. the Martha Schwartz I Hate nature / ‘Aluminati’ installation in the courtyard of the Kjarval is a nice critic of the horrid environmental degradation happening at the hands of Alcoa and corrupt government officials who are selling the landscape to make aluminum smelters and the dams which are necessary to power them.
(00:06:43, stereo audio, 12.9 mb)
also wander down to the harbor to take some photos. observing with irony that the whale-watching ships are docked immediately across the pier from the whaling ships — a fact which no doubt escapes most tourists as the signage is not easily interpretable. anyone from Greenpeace would know. (heh, Simmi tells the joke, my favorite meal is whale meat with green peas…)
managed to get over to Seltjarnarnes to visit with Edda, Stefan’s mum, who now has a flat in the same place that Jón and Helga lived some years back.
not much interesting to write about here. haven’t gotten many of the sound files that I have picked up over the couple weeks online yet. as usual, behind the flowing times. months, years behind on all this — picking up, accreting material observations, when to start the reverse process to dis-engage with this acquisition obsession? rhetorical questions. to scatter into a text of frequent error and mis-apprehension.
náttúra
Just away from the Björk and Sigur Rós náttúra event in Laugardalur. Chilled to the bone from standing for the last five hours up stage front. Damn Nikon battery went dead right upon arrival. (flickr shots); did some audio recording, but the wind was pretty blustery, so most of those samples will be useless, methinks. But maybe some short cuts or a remix piece. Never met Loki and the others, he didn’t want to come over before the show started, so I left the house to catch Ghostigital with Finnbogi Pétursson doing an two hour ambient remix performance under the name: that was okay. The whole event was so-so. Sigur Rós cranked through a 90-minute set with some interesting covers of previous work, and played well despite the chill, but frankly, the music seemed repetitive in a concert setting, compared to having an iTunes collection on shuffle play with a mix of experimental-slash-pop. There was a little electricity when Björk joined in one song as a drummer (a tentative one at that!). The smoke from the smoke machines just blew away. That’s what the energy felt like, it blew sideways away, towards the big LED screen where those not down front could see the artists close-up.
(00:11:59, stereo audio, 28.8 mb)
more Sigur Rós
(00:10:06, stereo audio, 24.3 mb)
some Björk:
(00:18:15, stereo audio, 43.8 mb)
And the next day’s newspaper noted that the entire park where the concert was held was completely filled with trash — bottles, cans, garbage everywhere: so much for the consciousness-raising aspect of the concert. People still seem to believe in some kind of remote ‘nature’ out there somewhere. Theoretical and not containing the Self as an extension. Or not even an extension, but simply part of it. period. Until there is a deep understanding of that, nothing will change.
back in town
Belly full of travel fiðrildi. Bland poetic insights into leaving Berlin. Not much to say. I’ll be back is probably the most profound. Sooner than later. Profound unknown, the future, what’s the point in statements like that, unless they are based on oracular hypersight. Or delusion. As delusion is just as likely to fit into dream as any ten-year politburo plan.
Out there, outside the door is all this noise. Confusing sensory impressions. And arrival in Ice Land is strange, after a long four year hiatus.
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I make my way to Valgerður’s place in Sund. Loki cycles over later to drop in for a bit. My boy. It’s good to see him.
Bummer, George Carlin dies a couple days ago. He made me laugh, and I am clearly not the only one that he had that effect on.
I look at it this way… For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers… so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it’s natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse. — George Carlin
And godaddy.com threw me for a serious loop with an email thunking down into my inbox saying I had to remove any non-web-related files on my server within 24 hours. And yes, it does appear that the user agreement says no file storage on the hosting account, so I have to quickly create web pages that contain links to all the audio and video files on storage. Pain in the arse. But I shot back saying all the content was part of my accreting web space and that 100% of the audio and image files were my own content, so they relented for 30 days at which time they will check the site again. A-holes.
Nan Hoover 1931-2008
I am shocked to hear via Raul that Nan Hoover just passed away. I had just talked to her on the telephone back in April she was just back in town after setting up her show in Salzburg, and we were going to get together after not crossing paths for some years. lung cancer and the ensuing chemo took her away in five weeks.
A condolences site is set up.
we first met through a very bizarre coincidence back in 1991 or so. MB and I were traveling in Germany and were up in Düsseldorf for a day, I don’t recall why. we were in the neighborhood of the Academy, so I thought it would be interesting to see this place where Nam June Paik (was teaching) and Joseph Beuys (had taught). the place was empty as we wandered around the halls. at some point I saw a name tag on a door that said Nan Hoover, and I recognized the name as this American video/performance artist. it was the only door with a Light shining out from under, so I knocked. Nan answered the door and I introduced myself mentioning right off that I was from Iceland and was at the Icelandic Academy teaching electronic media. she practically fell over. she and her student assistant, Paschutan Buzari had just at that moment been talking about the trip they were planning to Iceland, and that they didn’t have any direct contacts at the Academy. needless to say, a synchronous event which was a nice start to our connection. I subsequently did much of the ground logistics for the two week trip. the photo above is a group portrait of Nan (with some of her students and Icelandic friends along with MB and Loki (who was at that moment all of 5 days old!)). It was taken on the top of Perlan in Reykjavík. I hosted the student group at the Icelandic Academy where we had a nice collective happening at the end of their visit. and before that some field trips and visions of the Northern Lights among other activities. Nan and the students stayed in a couple flats that the Academy had right behind our house on Holmgardi. I arranged for her to do a screening and public talk at the Nylistasafn in Reykjavík as well. I later went to Düsseldorf a number of times to visit with her classes, as well as meeting her back in Amsterdam a few times.
re-reading the letters I was sending to Nan back then, somewhere packed away in the archive are her letters to me. her work is profoundly energized and a fundamental exploration of Light and change (the video and installation work). I would really like to get to Salzburg to see the show that she is sharing with Bill Viola. I never saw any of her live performance work. time passing. life passing.
A memory of standing in early autumn darkness in Reykjavik, behind my house, watching the Aurora Borealis with Nan and some of her students. Years later, she leaves us, and it occurs to me that through all the ways that she manifest for us, she was explicitly revealing the nature of Light as a process of living and of life. Black absorbs the energy of Light: she spent her life re-radiating that Light in a variety of splendid forms for us to be inspired by. Her vision of Light is profound and it thankfully resonates through all those who encountered her or her work. Thank you Nan for that and for our last phone call.
end of a long month
meet Karla briefly at a rather banal art event: Kunstinvasion im Blumengroßmarkt, Berlin-Kreuzberg.
idiosyncratic living is, by nature, an expression of a way of going. art (or the art world), as an accepted social function or framework in the techno-social system, puts specific limits on what protocols are acceptable and what not, it is important that the individual 1) realize this, and 2) that they do not allow those frameworks to dominate their expressive possibilities. a life-pathway is the primary expressive tool. the minute and daily form of life is the most indicative expression of an individuals presence and the possibilities of their expressive engagement.
It is sobering to think that we might be almost totally ignorant of the vast if dispersed sources of free energy which underlie our very existence. We may have more in common than we think with the medieval peasants, who could see the stars whirling in the sky but could not begin to figure out the connection between those stars and the physics of their everyday life. Like them, we may be doomed to essential ignorance in our lifetimes. (Many medieval people tried to imagine connections between the stars and their lives, but the results were quite embarrassing.) But if we develop the mathematical prerequisites and work hard and patiently and boldly to extend our real understanding, then perhaps someday our descendants will be able to attain a level of life that we peasants can hardly imagine. Alternatively, of course, the option of stagnation, fragmentation and extinction is also available to all species in the greater biosphere. — Paul J. Werbos
around town
meet Josephine and Florian at Boekie Woekie for a sort-of opening for an Icelandic artists, or so the announcement said. then to the Kunstvlaai the alternative to for the afternoon of openings and then dinner at Josephine’s place. great to meet them both. Florian and I have many friends in common as he’s an old mail-art networker.
in the last few weeks, I have on a number of occasions been labeled a theorist in the course of reductive and brief introductions. hmmmm. makes me think back to an opening in Aachen when Hans Werner was introducing me for a gallery talk and he used the German word Pazifist for reasons I didn’t at the time quite understand, so I stopped him and said I was an activist, people smiled. but to fall under the label theorist seems way off, but probably comes directly from the lack of production of objects. so, it requires a long conversation about the traditional nature of art. and about the materialist framework for judging value.