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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”

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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: Berlin, Germany

welcome to the tech-no-mad space

You have stumbled upon the next forking evolution of the original neoscenes archive and network presence. In 2008 it subsumed the entire neoscenes travelog that began back in 1994, five years before the term blog existed. it rolled over to a frames-based site in 1999, and then to a php-based site in 2004, and now onto WordPress as of 2008. it is now extending the timeline with images, audio, and video from the analog neoscenes archive. what’s this 1958-1963 “50 years on” material? it is one dimension of the use of the (b)log as the accompaniment of the text of my PhD thesis which touches on many of the topics surfaced here combined with my creative media practice. there is an evolving about page which contains more background on the whole project. contact: jhopkins at tech-no-mad dot net.
******
NEW FROM THE ARCHIVE
adding IRC logfiles from various projects and events; performance documents like Changing the Course of Nature, Open Air Radio Barcelona, and DEAF03 – Interfacing / Radiotopia / Keyworx. also in the process of adding some of the thousands of scanned black&white negatives that cover a period of time from 1976 through 2000 when I quit wet darkroom work. (a few (84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95) of the 4000+ portraits that are slowly migrating to these pages). will be including many fragments like that over the next months to enrich the overall blog experience, so stay-tuned here for new announcements. of course, there are always new field recordings for the aporee maps project and the accretionary .50 calibre sacrifice series.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

winter storm

anonymous online life. Plaxo. another online social networking site that makes people look (and feel!) like this… empowered, eh?

winter storm comes, one of those Pacific storms rolling from the west, from California, tracing little rain shadows across the desert. the first wave comes with thunder and dense, dark clouds, air temperature dropping 10 degrees (C). that passes to the east, blackening sky, followed by a double rainbow that plants itself into the scraped earth of the developments on the next range of hills. Granite Mountain is wreathed in scudding shreds of vapor. I can recall the sky four thousand feet lower in the low desert when these storms roll through. but most of all the complete saturation of the air with that wetted-earth smell. everything eight weeks dry. in late summer early fall sunshine.

got overwhelmed by the flood of responses from the class of 1976 regarding the images I finished uploading. maybe people are more nostalgic as times pass. it’s been interesting to hear from folks, though, after all this time. but still nothing solid to comprehend about why memory is so powerful. persistence of recognizing flows. evolutionary, yes. recalling what is dangerous, what is nutritious. but externalized memory, images. as the image-maker, eye hidden behind layers of amorphous silica distortion. seeing. (did I miss high school behind this glass?). am I replaying what was missed?

anyway, a selection of responses, so it goes.

Hi John, I can’t believe you put this all together after all this time. Great job on the photos. What a fabulous collection. It was great fun looking at them. It really took me back. Where do you live now? I still live in Maryland with my husband and son. Our daughter is a senior in college majoring in Biology. I would love to hear from you. Thanks again. God Bless. — Sharon Hill (Warnick)

Hi John, Thanks for the photos. My wife and I always hang out with her friends from high school, here in Los Angeles, and when I hear about how people still hang out with high school friends in Gaithersburg, I always wonder what it would be like to live there and see you all too. My mom and dad still live in the house we lived in when these pictures were taken, but they’re talking about moving now. Getting too old to keep up the house. When they go, my physical connection to Gaithersburg will finally be severed. It’s pictures like yours that keep it all alive for me. Thanks! — Chip Bolcik

john, I really enjoyed the pictures. I am not sure who found my email address, but I was grateful. Think of you often as I have been commuting through Clarksburg, which has gone through changes, as I am sure you have heard. Don’t know if you remember me or not, but wanted to say thanks for the photos. — Debbie Hokanson (Lorenz)

Hi John, Just wanted to thank you for all your hard work getting the photos from high school on your web site. I loved you website and glad you were able to continue with Photography. I’m sure that was time consuming, but certainly worth it. I think That 70’s Show should look at it so they could be more authentic. Hope you make the next reunion. Take care — Sharon Niemann (Hartley)

Absolutely fabulous photos! Had a great time reminiscing. Thanks for sharing! — Karen Harvey (Warnick)

Fantastic job, John! What a fun memory trip for a sunny southwest Florida afternoon. — Susi Martinsen (Sue Merkling)

Dear John… wwwwwwwwwwwooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww YOU HAVE DONE A GREAT JOB!!! I thank u for the time and specially for the devotion… in this wonderful project… — Zulma Urrego

Hey John, Nice job!!! Great memories. Thanks! — John C. Henriksen

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

netart 2008 – Conch

I spaced-out posting the netarts 2008 selections last November. here’s my brief jury comments:

This year’s netart award was very difficult to close in on. The absolute volume and traffic of data on the network does not seem to be correlated to its ultimate creative vitality. Can it be that the net has reached the saturation point as a means to realize the creative potential of its creators: that the signal-to-noise ratio has reached an asymptotic limit? Or is it merely an approach to the saturation point of the haplessly consuming audience? Is the net only a flooded communications platform in service of global markets? There is perhaps no particular reason to be overly cynical, although for this tech-no-madic curator the life-changes that accompany each further implementation of technologically-mediated connection seem to lose their appeal more and more quickly. For a creative, though, the question remains — how to be evolutionary when taking on the next tool presented by the Venture Techno-capitalists. Where to find something that avoids the clichés of, for example, the ubiquitously pop Web 2.0? There are the occasionally surprising implementations of the 2.0 paradigm, but they are often revealed as the tired exercises in the viral marketing of venture capital dreams. What inspiring sources are out there in the net? Are there any? Perhaps, but only if we leave the material behind to search for the ghost in the machine.

Where is the immaterial, the trace or evidence of the metaphysical, where is it hidden in the technological network of things? Is it actually hidden at all? Or is it simply not there? Has technology, in the form of global networks, banished those inexplicable essences from itself? Technology does have its obvious formative materialized essence, as it is another thing that presents itself to us in our limited sensibilities. But in the dislocated network, far from our touch, what is the apprehended essence, that attractor that keeps us intently focused on the screen. An attractor so compelling and full of gravitas that we chose to limit any change in our point-of-view and remain instead in a motionless screen-bent gaze, in a stationary orbit?

What draws us with this gravity, what draws us into its field of action? We are fascinated by the Light, sure, but our attention is bound by the gravity. The attractor of the machine lies within itself, not within us. We orbit the gravitational center of our own creation, the dense hubris of code. Without code there is only the material gap into which falls our embodied being, levity left to airs and vapors, (hydro)carbon (a)(e)ffluence and other oxidation-reduction reactions.

The grand prize goes to a work that is elegantly inexplicable, conch by the Japanese designer Ｙoshiyuki Katayama. Four topical and simple interactive works explore code as a means to transform time and space into essential visual essences. We may easily orbit the code while watching its realization. And time passes. Such is life.

The runners-up all seem to find simple interactions between code and presentation, leaving some viewers to perhaps simply shrug and move on. Somehow I like to think that these projects represent a search for the network coding of the koan — the Buddhist meditative tool — where the code is an essential step on the path to enLightenment.

Cloud of Clouds by Miguel Leal and Luís Sarmento keeps the sky open for interpretation as it should be, while Ethan Ham’s work, Self Portrait, leaves the self open for interpretation. And, to disagree with the Internet, as does the Disagreeing Internet well, that leaves our orbit around the gravitas of code very much open for not only interpretation but for fundamental questioning and even outright rejection. No more passive agreement with those Venture Capitalists!

Perhaps, when the last flicker comes from the last flat screen, we will understand that code is a chant to exorcise the machine, leaving the ghost (and us!) free to move on to something else. We shall see.

John Hopkins, Prescott, Arizona, USA, 04.Nov.2008

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  • place: en route Glen Ridge, New Jersey - Prescott, Arizona

moving through Chi-town

Liberty International Airport. 0500. Stef yet again, graciously, gets up at an infernal hour (though not too very much earlier than his normal working hours) and runs me over to the airport. a very long day it is before I arrive by taxi to Al’s place in Prescott. extremely bad weather in Chicago caused a couple hours’ delay, but otherwise a routine vegetation in the bowels of the transportation network.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

green plodding

Berlin, Kiel, Berlin, New York. place frames time. more-or-less. and what of it? multiplicity of options and possibilities frames the next phase of movement. and it is only a matter of survival.

Miga makes a plate of pancakes. with jam from his parents garden in rural Lithuania. nice!

creative production slows to small fragments of text, some images, and some sounds. no mental space to work on the numerous proposals which hang over the head. not interested in the green consumer revolution which is leading the media art world around, tugging on gold-ringed nostrils to keep the plod in acceptable directions. as with so many times before the engagement of science by art is naive and un-productive even in the simple critical sense of raising real issues and stimulating real dialogues. disappointing.

but conversation with Udo last night around aporee maps and some ideas come up along with possible information/collaboration sources that I already have in place from older networks.

in Berlin for a day.

posted
  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

Listasafn Íslands

drop by for a visit with Val to catch up on her work updating the database of the National Gallery of Iceland. meet for a bit with old friend Posi who is now the director of the museum and Rakel who I worked with way back in 1994 on the first stirrings of network activity in the form of a web presence for the organization. brings back memories. and thoughts.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

imaginary relevance

can a lack of imagination be overcome through intensive observation of the world-that-is? what is imagination? the dream of what-could-be? realizing that there are parameters of be-ing which govern imagining, what can be done to optimize the process?

and, only marginally related to imagination…

sotto voce (posted to brainstorms on back-channel communication and surfing in the wired classroom): I think one of the elephants in the room is the question of relevance. By this I mean — yes, the network provides channels to access information about the apparent subject of the learning experience. But what about the learning approach where a group simply maps their own understanding of a ‘knowledge’ space, and extends that space with their OWN ideas, relevant to their situation, rather than the constant referencing to what is becoming the standard (knowledge) ‘out there’ in the (socially-defined, dominantly-positioned) network. I believe this loss of autonomy of the local group of learners will have DEEP repercussions in the future. Indeed, it represents a loss of idiosyncrasy and autonomy of the learning process AND a deep dislocation of local relevance. It also represents a deep loss of diversity in the dominant social system. (a deep gain in conformity!) This might explain how students are finding ‘public’ education as a real learning situation ever more irrelevant and in need of being avoided or dis-engaged from at all costs.

People will pay attention to information relevant to their situation.

unfortunately, to qualify the last sentence, they will also be easily distracted when seduced into believing something is relevant based on external pressures rather that internal impulses. c’est comme ça!

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

ruud janssen

old mail-art node Ruud Janssen has recently published a series of five books featuring interviews with well-known artists in the field of Fluxus and Mail-Art.

The interviews were conducted by Ruud and were part of an independent project where he integrated many different communication forms/channels as part of the process of the interviews: personal visits, letters, faxes, telephone calls, and e-mails. The results are now available in these self-published books. See https://stores.lulu.com/iuoma for details and ordering information.

Ruud’s webspace : https://www.iuoma.org
Ruud’s blog : https://iuoma.blogspot.com
Mail-Art Projects blog : https://mailartprojects.blogspot.com

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

medialogies

Month(s) end(s), hot Berlin. Pushing 90F/33C. Summer is here.

Annie points out that the incident team deploys monochrome, a project featuring a wide variety of electronic/network-based projects.

and then there is the blog/audio file from the RCA in London, a talk/discussion on Brazilian Medialogies – Systems of Learning with Carlos Villela, Felipe Fonseca, and Ricardo Ruiz.

fortune cookie:

All the passions make us commit faults — love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones. Lucky Numbers: 4, 6, 15, 19, 22, 46.

and on to meet Udo and head to a couple openings along with another session of dkfrf again to hear Ben, Michael and other’s perform. beforehand, on the way down, a slow cruise through Görlitzer Park, summer expression! afterward, sitting outside at a cafe talking until very late.

posted
  • place: en route Berlin, Germany - Vilnius, Lithuania

non-transformative systems

flying in: back in Lithuania. immediately the impression of the system not having changed much. not like the transformations happening in Berlin. aside from the few tourist drags, the town is like it was four years ago. and the system still resonates a deep conservative polarity with an inertia still flowing in resistance to … anything new.

lunch with Mindaugas with the first of several very mediocre meals. and meet Viktorija and Agle, the enthusiastic and hard-working student union officers who are organizing the whole workshop. I am impressed immediately with their determination to make a difference. sadly it is exactly these kinds of spirits who are the ones who leave Lithuania because a realization that things are not changing.

got to tour the Academy, with all it’s meter-thick walls and pre-Gothic arched ceilings. no wonder the wi-fi (communications) network doesn’t work so well. the place is naturally shielded from anything, it is part of some older church construction. a convent chapel or so. along with a 1970’s-era structure which is quite intense. in the center of the complex are two major churches, St. Francis’ and the Bernardine. there were the big changes from the East-West polarization collapsing, but since then there are few if any shifts in the faculty, and worse, the mentality. departments are rigidly defined by materialist agendas and territories of control. students are given only cursory freedom to innovate. huh? how do they survive. stoic, a little like Icelanders, but dreaming of more, with Europe at the doorstep. thank god for the Erasmus exchange program which allows the most adventurous to escape to better things.

Alvydas, head of the Media Department, the most open situation in the Academy, mentions again the idea of inviting me back as guest faculty, but I have reservations. on one hand any place is tolerable for a year, but it would be a serious challenge to cope with the conservative vectors in the social system.

(00:03:38, stereo audio, 7 mb)

We stay in rooms reserved at the academy hostel, in the guest’s wing, with windows opening on a small street that is so loud, it’s hard to carry on a conversation with the window even cracked open. The garbage truck rattles the windows and so does each car blasting up the street. Stone walls + narrow streets + no speed limits + bad roads = intense noise levels.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

Steve Cisler 1942 – 2008

then get the news that Steve Cisler passed away yesterday. what a bummer. I always read his postings on nettime and a few other lists. Paul Jones has a detailed outline of some of Steve’s many activities. as an update, another blog came online for condolences: https://communitynetworking2008.wordpress.com/.

prepping for the performance tomorrow night. never feeling ready with only half my normal equipment. got the files, but no midi/usb controller nor keyboard. and not even the right software. will be winging it. and who knows about the audience. but whatever the case, Said gives one pathway!

Least of all should an intellectual be there to make his/her audience feel good: the whole point is to be embarrassing, contrary, even unpleasant. — Edward Said

posted
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

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.

posted
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

current Capra

Lesson #1
A living social system is a self-generating network of communications. The aliveness of an organization resides in its informal networks, or communities of practice. Bringing life into human organizations means empowering their communities of practice.

Lesson #2
You can never direct a social system; you can only disturb it. A living network chooses which disturbances to notice and how to respond. A message will get through to people in a community of practice when it is meaningful to them.

Lesson #3
The creativity and adaptability of life expresses itself through the spontaneous emergence of novelty at critical points of instability. Every human organization contains both designed and emergent structures. The challenge is to find the right balance between the creativity of emergence and the stability of design.

Lesson #4
In addition to holding a clear vision, leadership involves facilitating the emergence of novelty by building and nurturing networks of communications; creating a learning culture in which questioning is encouraged and innovation is rewarded; creating a climate of trust and mutual support; and recognizing viable novelty when it emerges, while allowing the freedom to make mistakes. — Fritjof Capra

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

empyre musings

John von Seggern (on empyre wireless sustainability):

I agree with you, however we shouldn’t confuse the Internet/digital networks in general with the larger techno-social system within which they exist. In point of fact, digital networks perform many tasks much more energy-efficiently than we could do without them (telecommuting vs. actual jet travel for example), so I would expect them to continue to thrive in an energy-constrained future even if many other facets of our society are radically reconfigured.

sotto voce: But in the end, that’s a little like saying how much money I will save by buying a pair of pants at 50% off the regular price. I don’t save anything, I spend money buying the pants.

The Internet as an infrastructure cannot (except theoretically) be excised from the techno-social system that it is embedded within. Energy consumption of that system rises, is rising. Web 2.0 sites brought online huge numbers of energy-consuming server farms which never existed when users did not store social networking data, for example. And the energy usage stats can’t be limited to nation-states, because it’s a global boat we are (apparently) floating in. It’s like saying the US uses far less energy making steel now than it did 50 years ago. What about how much it consumes? And where was the other steel made? The same argument was also used with digital creating “paperless” offices — track paper usage!

Internet helps Americans save more energy every year
sotto voce: Of course, in the process of the engineered evolution of any particular device there will be optimization — that is the goal of engineering. If that wasn’t the case, our system would have never been marginally sustainable from the beginning. Extracting stats on theoretically isolated elements is not valid except for more back-slapping “we’ve done it, we’ve found a way to have and eat our cake”—and it represents no real solution. It is exactly this localized isolation of elements which allows this mentality to persist. Just as with many previous industrial advances where a resource was abundant, any negative affects of the use of that resource was able to be overlooked by the end user who was somehow isolated (usually geographically) from them. That geographic isolation is no longer possible when the effects are global. Think, around the globe, there are no isolated corners to sit anymore.

This is exactly the point that I am making—that unless people realize radical shifts in their/our relationship with the deep and broad techno-social infrastructure, we are not making real reductions in the overall footprint, and it is the size of the cumulative footprint that will spell the difference between sustainability or the alternative which is only dimly making itself known through the fog of naivety. (and believe me, I don’t place myself above the fray, but energy consumption and the reliance on the largely invisible functioning of that globe-spanning infrastructure is a seriously addictive way to go).

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

drawing

old networker-friend, Paul Rutkovsky (of floridada) and I have some nodes in common in Lithuania of all places. he was just there and here in Berlin as well. he sends this invitation from a recent show of drawings on paper that he had in Vilnius.

suspended ambronesia, the whole week gets screwed up. and what do I have to show for it? nada. started off good at the Institute meeting on Monday, giving a short presentation to students on the block seminar that I’ll be doing in early June Sustainable Creative Presence :: Distributed Be-ing. have a few conversations afterward with some interested students. then a brief faculty meeting that is conducted mostly in English to my astonishment (for my sake).

Technology arises from human systems, but what is the nature of that genesis? Is technological advance increasing the possibilities of or increasing the limitations on creative activities?

As techno-social systems continue to evolve and become more pervasive, their effects begin to dominate all aspects of the social and cultural landscape. These evolving forms radically alter the possibilities of human presence as well as the range of social controls on that presence. It is human presence — and especially human presence in collaborative and vital relation — that is the basis of creative action. A deep understanding of this continuum of relation brings exceptional power to a sustainable creative process.

This seminar will ask many questions about where we are in this moment — a willingness to engage with others in open and honest discussion is most important. With open dialogue among the participants, the answers will be relevant and life-changing.

The approach will be decidedly interdisciplinary: students from different backgrounds are welcome.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

Art and Teaching Philosophy

ART

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

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

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

tea

gusts and streamers of corn snow bounce past the windowsill, bringing the imagined shivering anticipation of heading out to shop for groceries. finally finished with the tin of Turkish Tomurcuk Earl Grey tea. it was good, but a disappointment compared to the long-leaf Ceylonese also available at the Turkish supermarket around the corner from Mindaugas’ place. I bought the tin because is was smaller than the huge kilo boxes of long-leaf. can’t decide now whether to pick up a small quantity of finer tea, or what. last month I picked up a stainless steel tea brewer that holds probably three or four regular cups of water. I’ve been brewing a full container each morning for the pre-noon writing session, drinking by the sip the whole time practically, tea with whole milk. necessary practice just to keep hands warm. otherwise I have to wear half-gloves — the relative lack of finger motion (am I not writing enough?) chills the hands. so, it is an integral part of the writing process that seems to be happening here. whether or not it is successful, I cannot say until I spin the text out into the wider spaces of network. that’s about to happen as I am working on the conclusions while refining the precursor parts of the overall text.

and in the time I write this, blue sky arrives. squall weather like in Iceland. ripping through. and vanishing without a trace.

I head out for a trip to the grocery. it is cold, but the trip down is with the wind, and I travel between squalls. I’m in a quandary over which tea to get now. bags are three times the cost of bulk, but they have only large 250 gram bags of bulk, so the total price is steep. and also, since I again focus on Earl Grey, though I wouldn’t mind a custom mix with some Lapsang Souchong or Russian, the bergamot in the Earl Grey is very volatile, so a large bag will lose its flavor unless it is used quickly. hmmm. but the price point drives me these days on as tight a budget that I am. so, big bag of Earl Grey. so it goes. looking forward to the first cup after the end of the Turkish stuff.

yesterday, a touristic walk around the Reichstag and Tiergarten area with Marie-Hélène. clearly a major holiday, most shops closed except for cafes. and hundreds of people out walking despite the chilly weather. the line was too long to go up into the dome, so we wandered down to the HKW to take in Song Dong’s installation, then back to the Holocaust Memorial via the Brandenberg Gate (past the guy dressed in full buckskins and a faux-Sioux war bonnet playing some kind of generic indigenous flute music with a back-up sound system and generator. just too weird for me. the Euro-obsession with an imagined and imaginary cowboy-and-indian culture in the mythological West of Hollywood is mostly over the top and with no connection to reality.)

I find myself frequently (at least in mind) making the comparison between Washington, D.C., and Berlin. as Imperial centers (in different phases of dominance).

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

sound constructions

just out of the second evening of sound constructs with Udo, Rinus, Jodi, Derek, Kim (remotely), and some other interesting folks. nice vibe.

31. The hacker class has an ambivalent relationship to education. The hacker class desires knowledge, not education. The hacker comes into being though the pure liberty of knowledge in and of itself. The hack expresses knowledge in its virtuality, by producing new abstractions that do not necessarily fit the disciplinary regime of managing and commodifying education. . Hacker knowledge implies, in its practice, a politics of free information, free learning, the gift of the result to a network of peers. Hacker knowledge also implies an ethics of knowledge subject to the claims of public interest and free from subordination to commodity production. This puts the hacker into an antagonistic relationship to the struggle of the capitalist class to make education an induction into wage slavery. — Ken Wark

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

migrating reality

Miga asked if I would participate in these two projects, in the first as redactor, in the second as a presenter and as a performance artist. should be interesting. especially as it is occurring at the same time as the conference in Savannah. of necessity, I will appear in Savannah virtually, and in person here in Berlin. that’s the easiest option!

we meet down at the Galerie der Künste to scope out the situation.

Migrating is reality. Reality is migrating.

The “Migrating Reality Project” organized between 04-05 April 2008 at the Galerie der Künste (Berlin), Potsdamer Str. 93, is a live platform to discuss the mixing and remixing of art forms and digital data flows within the context of the current worldwide reality of migration.

From 01 March in cooperation with the online ‘zine balsas.cc for media and technology we are initiating a focused look at the migration between reality, media, technologies, art, spaces, disciplines, politics, and networks. Migration interests us in cultural and technological aspects as well as in aspects of the movement of different objects and subjects. Balsas.cc has been publishing online in Lithuanian and English from Vilnius, Lithuania since 2005. Every fourth month it announces a new topic and as of now “Migrating Reality” is open for your interpretation.

We invite the submission of texts, sounds, and visuals (photo, video, etc) which will help us to delve deeper into the subject during the Berlin project. Balsas.cc is stimulating interest in the generation and publishing of ideas online — the most important of which will be published in the printed catalog at the end of 2008. We are looking for not only pure texts but also in migrating formats, interdisciplinary discussions, interviews, and the meetings of artists and theoreticians. Please submit texts in English, German, and Lithuanian to balsas@vilma.cc. The rolling submission and publication period is from 01 March to 01 June.

Editorial Board: Vytautas Michelkevicius, Mindaugas Gapsevicius, Zilvinas Lilas, and John Hopkins

Migrating Reality

The conference and exhibition Migrating Reality is organised by >top – Verein zur Förderung kultureller Praxis e.V. in Berlin and KHM – Kunsthochschule für Medien in Köln. It is also generously supported by the Embassy of Lithuania in Germany within the framework of the German-Baltic Year 2008.

The event focuses on the Baltic nation of Lithuania. In the last fifteen years, more than ten percent of Lithuania’s population has emigrated, among them numerous individuals engaged in the cultural sector. Others, while still living in Lithuania, are deeply engaged with the subject of migration. Selected individuals from both these groups will present their work at the conference and exhibition.

Migrating Reality deals specifically with the realities of migration and migrating realities that are independent of global structural changes and economic or cultural processes and are opening unique opportunities for creative exchange.

Electronic and digital cultures generate completely new forms of migration. In the creative arts, new phenomena related to migration and the synergies of disparate systems are emerging. Artistic products evolve from traditional forms to hybrid digital forms. Analogue products are being digitized; data spaces are trans-located from one data storage system to another; existing sounds, images, and texts are re-mixed and fused into new data sets.

The emergent processes of migration generate temporary autonomous zones where socio-political actions occur without the interference of formal control mechanisms. These zones and enclaves appear in physical space as well as in virtual space. By integrating these into available structures and temporarily interconnecting them, new trajectories and ideas are created.

Migration is reality and reality is migrating. This dialectic, appearing as a banal topic in everyday politico-economic debate, includes inarticulate issues which, by their fragmented nature have to be dealt with through creative multidisciplinary means. Only occasionally do components of the migrating global situation surface in the mass media, within individual mediums of expression, or in exhibitions as documentation and artwork. This is likely because dealing with the realities of migration in an explicitly European context means accepting the potential for conflict.

This trans-cultural German-Lithuanian event will take on the risk in highlighting certain fragments of the discourse. Participants will be invited to piece together aspects of this inexorable global mobility on the one hand and of retrograde power relations on the other.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

info growth

the creative use of digital networks needs to proceed with an understanding of the underlying principle of human relation as the situated potential for the real exchange of energy. I have stated this so many times, in so many variations that I’ve gotten tired of it. is it obvious? or useless?

the following from the introduction to a conference taking place in London at the London School of Economics in April. I’d like to go, but can’t afford it. no scholarships available.

Taken together, these developments establish a new socio-economic environment in which information-based operations, and information goods and services acquire crucial importance. This is clearly shown in the rapid ascent to economic dominance of internet-based companies that demonstrate superior data editing and information management strategies. New commercial possibilities steadily develop around the production, ordering and distribution of information, as data become interoperable across sources and older forms of information (e.g. image, text and sound) are brought to bear upon one another. But information growth has wider social implications as well. The involvement of information in every walk of life redefines the relationship between information and reality, and reshapes the social practices through which information is stored, retrieved, understood, disseminated and remembered. Increasingly, information mediates between humans and reality. In this context, the activities of ordering, making sense, evaluating, navigating and acting upon information step onto the centre-stage of contemporary life, impinging upon skill profiles and personal choices. They often do so under conditions in which the established boundaries between individuals and institutions are rendered shifting and negotiable. — Jannis Kallinikos and Jose-Carlos Mariategui

posted
  • place: Kiel, Germany

Michael Shanks

not sure where the link to Michael Shanks site comes up, but the syllabus for his course Ten Things is deLightful and incisive. he’s got some really interesting thoughts on the life of objects, the presence of humans, and the history of both.

If we look at processes as well as discrete objects, we can be led into a myriad of connections and trajectories. In the heterogeneous networking that is the engineering of a thing, there is no end to ramification. An artifact disperses through its scenarios, networks and genealogies of origination, manufacture, distribution, use and discard.

Interpretation, as re-articulation, can track certain affiliations or lines of connection, as I sketched with the aryballos. There is always more that remains unsaid, unacknowledged, unseen, because interpretation may not go down a particular track. This is so evident in archaeological fieldwork, or indeed in any scientific research, where there is always a choice to be made of what matters to the research interest. What is left behind, ignored or discarded is the background noise of history and experience. This is far from inconsequential. First, because something important may have been overlooked. Science constantly takes a second look at things and finds something that was missed. Second, because things stand out as significant against this background; without it there could be no story, no message, no understanding. Third, because this is the noise of the ambient everyday work that makes society what it is; it is the noise of the life of things constantly reweaving our social fabric. — Michael Shanks

I recently tracked down Andreas Voigt, a documentary film-maker who I met back in the early 1990’s at a film festival at Regnboginn in Reykjavík. He was present for the screening of his deeply moving black-and-white features made in and around Leipzig in the late 80’s and early 90’s during the early post-Cold Wars days (Letztes Jahr – Titanic and Leipzig im Herbst). He emails me that his most recent documentary, Mit Rentiernomaden über den Ural is on tonight. Christian and I watch while Steffi is out at choir practice. Very fine work.

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: Glen Ridge, New Jersey

coming up!

neoscenes cranks up the sonic streaming for the global 2008 art’s birthday party with friends in Austria, Japan, Germany, Canada, France, Australia, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere.

Thursday, 17 January 2008, live web-mix — this audio stream will be a sonic redux from the neoscenes.net archive of various birthday parties recorded during the last year as well as the travel necessary to get to them.

1800-1900 (GMT) London
10:00-11:00 PM PST (GMT-8) Los Angeles
1:00 – 2:00 PM EST (GMT-5) New York
2000-2100 CET (GMT+2) Helsinki
Friday 0500-0600 (GMT+11) Sydney

–> tune to the live stream — rtsp://qt2.waag.org/birthday.sdp

ART’s BIRTHDAY is an annual event first proposed on January 17th 1963 by French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou. He suggested that 1,000,000 years ago “A man took a dry sponge and dropped it into a bucket full of water. Who that man was is not important. He is dead but art is alive.” Filliou’s ideas have inspired many artists until today.

After Filliou’s death in 1987, some artists began to celebrate Art’s Birthday with mail art, fax and slow scan TV events in the spirit of his concept of “The Eternal Network” or “La Fête permanente”. The birthday parties took place in different cities across the world and artists were asked to bring birthday presents for Art — works that could be shared over the network.

Art’s Birthday Party has never been a formal event, but was always organized on an ad hoc basis through the network. Every participating location (and they are different every year) organizes its own party — from a few friends in a private studio to a performance evening in a museum or gallery. Filliou’s invention of Art’s Birthday is wonderfully absurd and humorous in the typical Fluxus tradition of serious fun. So the global birthday party for art has always tried to be fun while paying homage to Robert Filliou’s dream of The Eternal Network. — Robert Adrian, 2005

posted
  • place: Greenwich Village, New York

Phill’s Solstice party

But it’s not true. Where does nomadism arise? In the pure madness of the shakuhachi tones, played by an itinerant Zen komuso? nah. It appears that I have a limited audience for my work. For networking, all connections seem intense. But the potential for greater intensity is there, though that alone may work to the opposite extreme of shrinking any audience. Focus and power seem there. Need balancing with the rest of life which is that constant interweaving of souls. Not daring to miss one in the process. and so:

The evening is a pilgrimage in to the City to Phill Niblock‘s annual Solstice performance—on Katharine’s reminder and invite a couple weeks ago at reboot in Berlin. Phill has been doing these for years and I felt like it completes the year in a significant way (having had a nice two-hour listening/watching experience with Wes and August with Phill’s incredible DVD work back in January on the Other coast, Santa Barbara). But, yeah, what better way to spend a Solstice—immersed in the work (and at the home!) of a prolific and personable visual-sonic artist. The performance/happening was an extension of the work Phill has pursued for some years—incredible 16mm material shot around the globe of people engaged in physical (hand) labor: The Movement Of People Working. This visual expression immersed within his signature massive and precise microtonal environments. Nice opportunity. The admittedly brief sonic remix below includes the sounds from the kitchen and the downstairs radiator on the way out in a state of heightened awareness!

(00:09:02, stereo audio, 17.4 mb)

Phill has hosted the Experimental Intermedia performance series for 34 years. If you are ever in NYC, check out the schedule of a bewildering array of international artists, it’s great! This year is the 39th anniversary of the founding of E.I.

Got to connect with Katharine, Keiko, and Elsa again, and met some other local folks.

posted
  • place: Margaretville, New York

storms

the rumored severe winter storm becomes only a Light sleet. despite all the globe-girdling technological network of weather sensors, they are wrong. it is a modest fall. mostly rain and a bit of sleet. windy.

The Meteorological Society … has been formed not for a city, nor for a kingdom, but for the world. It wishes to be the central point, the moving power, of a vast machine. … It desires to have at its command, at stated periods, perfect systems of methodical and simultaneous observations; it wishes its influence and its power to be omnipresent over the globe … to know, at any given instant, the state of the atmosphere on every point on its surface. — John Ruskin

posted
  • place: Brooklyn, New York

share:reboot

feeling pretty lousy with this hanging-on cold, but a chilly and wet trip by bus in to reboot is rewarded with some very nice crossings-of-paths — Keiko (talking share tokyo plans), Elsa (talking Lisboa and roguewaves plans), Anton, Dan; from share.montreal, Jim (is a polar/solar bear, surprise, surprise, yes, indeed, very nice to discover this!) and Marie-Hélène; as was Katherine (another polar bear! great!). head home somewhat early with Dan and Emily to their place in Brooklyn for the night, then back to Jersey the next afternoon.

Emily’s got a nice collection of conscious education books from her studies at Columbia’s Teacher’s College, I take some time to dig into a few of them for some good jolts. she fills me in on her work developing kids’ social networking platforms for the non-profit takingitglobal.org.

see at a distance an undesirable person;
see close at hand a desirable person;
come closer to the undesirable person;
move away from the desirable person;
coming closer and moving apart,
how interesting life is.
— Gensho Ogura

posted
  • place: Köln, Germany

netart 2007 – Feraltrade

I was a co-curator again this year for the annual netarts.org 2007 awards. it was a tough year for finding fresh takes under our call for works:

Embodied Praxis – Real Life 2.0

For those of us who use the net, watch TV or SMS friends, we find that we tend to spend a lot of our time peering into one screen or another during our waking hours. Changing images float in front of our eyes as the disruptive sounds and jingles of our prosthetic devices keep us under the spell of the network. Texts flow into focus for as long as we need to retain them, and just as effortlessly gush out again through our fingertips into the ether.

Embodied Praxis – Real Life 2.0 draws on these telematic interactions and examines how art and artists take up these strands and weave them into daily life. However, the projects showcased will not dwell on the ways in which these digital traces are drawn from our lived lives rather they will manifest how our real lives are constructed around these embedded threads; and how their telematic substance is injected into the praxis of daily life.

The projects selected (will) track those nomadic flows as they are propelled across borders and through different languages; producing scenarios – political, commercial and cultural – that net those fluctuating moments in new and distinct cultural spaces. Although we recognize that these specific moments – such as sending/receiving an SMS or a real time interaction in Second Life are primarily transitory in their essence and serve more to de-localize us in non-spaces than locate us in embodied space – we also acknowledge the ways in which these concrete threads actively constitute the social self and, by association, serve to construct the complex fabric of Real Life.

and I wasn’t consistently online to be able to focus as well as I should have, but even still there were some nice projects to be seen, and the honorable-mention list is very interesting.

Grand Prize: Feral Trade by Kate Rich https://www.feraltrade.org/

Again, a complex year for net art, looking at the divergent and still diverging fields of creative production within global networks. This year’s criteria of “Embodied Praxis” was complicated by the arrival of the much-hyped Second Life on the main-stream media stage. But material and very human networking trumped the attenuated virtuality of SL. Making a functional parody of globalized capitalism, Feral Trade seeks to stimulate a direct distribution network that follows the connections of existing social networks. It takes advantage of the un-mediated plurality of human networks and personal connections and constructs a direct affront to the anonymous standardization of global trade. It opens a small crack in the facade of globalization where autonomous collective be-ing can be activated. As a classic example of a TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone), I hope it takes hold to become a permanent presence that de-powers the dominant and monolithic capitalist structure. At the very least, it points out the deep lack in that structure, and this is a critical starting point for evolutionary changes in human relation.

An honorable mention went to Isabelle Jenniches for The Call:

This project emerges out of the long-term network practice of artist Isabelle Jenniches who has in the past worked in a wide variety of creative net-based activities. The particular piece, “The Call” is one of several process-oriented projects she has initiated that depend on the availability of generic user-controlled Internet web-cams. The works are constructed over a long period of time — time spent watching the selected scenario, remotely — life-time spent observing the world. Thousands of images are made during a methodological process of deep-looking through this mediated network eye. The extended seeing and repetitive digital stitching operations on the thousands of gathered images acts to frame a meditative daily routine. The cumulative practice approaches the classical Zen expression — “there is no web-cam, there is no PhotoShop, there is only the Void” — and it arises through the post-Cartesian possibilities of a commonly accessible network interface. Formally recalling David Hockney’s early Polaroid SX-70 time-space collage work, “The Call” is an intimate and intense personal vision of a scope rarely manifest in the click-through eye-candy world of the net.

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: Düsternbrooke, Kiel, Germany
  • author: Sarah Chung

Sarah Chung

former student Sarah lets me reprint this article she wrote recently about her creative practice:

Sarah H. Chung :: https://www.myspace.com/sarahhdot

I am an experimental multimedia artist, a student, and a teacher based in Denver, Colorado, USA. My latest artistic pursuits are a combination of various mediums including still image, video, sound, sculpture, light, and performance. Most recently I have been collaborating with another female artist, Heidi Higginbottom, to choreograph audio/visual performances using found objects, homemade instruments, contact microphones, and film loops. We make homemade contact microphones out of easily attainable and affordable materials and use them to amplify the sound of the movement of objects. We have used objects ranging from dishware, tile, typewriters, music boxes, sewing machines, thumb pianos, toys, water, or any curious object we can get our hands on. Our intentions are not to make melodic pieces of “music,” but to isolate and arrange pure commonplace sounds that would normally be easily lost in the proceedings of everyday life. While these objects may be ordinary, they refer to a vast web of associations and marked memories. By arranging them, we create a new resonance in the relationships the objects and symbols have with one another. These relationships are meant to be memory cues that can be triggered by sensory experience. We are in the process of experimenting with different technologies and digital software to incorporating projections, audio delay, editing and looping.

As a studio art major I was largely focused on traditional forms of art such as painting, drawing, and photography. It was about six years ago that I began to pay more attention to the intricate and beguiling aspects of the digital art culture. I was introduced to it from digital art courses being taught by visiting professor, John Hopkins, who is a working artist and has taught and traveled internationally. Projects included collecting and arranging self-generated media and media filtered from outside sources. These included field recordings, videos, still images, and lines of text. I had not dealt with this kind of medium prior to this, so I approached it the same as I would painting and 35mm photography. While the navigation of new software in a limited time span was challenging, the results of the projects left me very intrigued and curious about digital culture. I believe that the success of these projects were due to the non-linear process of collecting media without a finished product as motivation. Filtering media (books, internet, video, music, sound clips, etc.) provides an intuitive process for choosing content. It becomes a dialogue that interacts with an individuals sensibilities and social views. Whether I am drawn to content or pure aesthetic, some aspect of the media strikes me, and I collect it.

With human interaction, technology can be used as a tool to express emotion and the individualized perspectives of human experience. Technology brings with it an efficiency that adds new time-lines within our culture. Ubiquitous media screens flash loaded images and sounds that are intended to influence feelings and opinions about products, services, and perspectives in government. These messages compete with each other and have conditioned us to receive information at an exponentially increasing rate. In a society saturated with advertising, I feel a responsibility to express and tap into more emotive, internalized feelings and memories, and to offer a situation for slowing down. This desire is what caused me to seek out the tools and skills that could connect me with the vast and accessible network I was experiencing.

I believe it is of utmost importance for individuals to be informed about technologies so that they may exercise basic democratic principles. I had been intimidated by technology before, but I felt that placing myself outside of the existence of it is like surrendering my own rights. Technology is propelled by human curiosity, but is often used as a system of control. History is constantly redefined based on documentation. Dominant historical theories are based on those with the power to document and expose others to their material. It is crucial to actively participate in the documentation process of our own history in process.

Links: (check them out!!)
https://www.neoscenes.net
https://home.earthlink.net/~erinys/contactmic.html
https://www.pierrebastien.com/
https://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/
https://www.mutek.org/
https://www.haamu.com/launau
https://www.colleenplays.org/
https://www.skoltzkolgen.com/

posted
  • place: Bremen, Germany

meta/data

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

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

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

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

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

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

posted
  • place: 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?

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

The Wild Surmise

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

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

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

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

ubicomp

Inane story on NPR, dancing around the hype of ubiquitous computing (still?) — With the installation of a network of sensors on house plants that will send wifi info to their owner about their condition.

Who sets up this network? Who maintains it? Who interacts with it? When and why is it interacted with? Under what conditions is it necessary to interact with it? Or is it ever necessary to interact with it? Those people who are so interested in spreading digital networks somehow forget the necessity of manufacturing, deployment, installation, configuration, and, especially, maintenance. Not to mention the actual (life-)time necessary to interact with the data being gathered, tweaking it if necessary (or even possible) into a form that is understandable and usable to the idiosyncratic self, NOT the generic Everyman (who is the Grail of the data collectors).

These questions point back to the cultural (d)evolution which mandates a rolling over of systems from localized individual control to a centralized social command-and-control. Now, a big argument used by the ubicomp community is that the existence of these networks liberates the localized Everyman from the drudgery of some localized chore or another. Watering house plants, in this case. But there is a hidden factor — the subsequent reliance of the individual on the centralized system of production and (standardized control) — which creates and deploys these devices. It costs money to have these devices. And the greater the deployment, the larger the social infrastructure necessary to produce and deploy these devices and systems. Think, for example, of the mining and basic industry that provides the raw materials that go into the construction of the machines used to make and deliver the devices. The individual consequently must be participating in this larger system in order to receive the device. To participate in that system requires a payment of (life-)time (converted in the grind of social production to cash). So the (life-)time freed-up by the device is more than consumed by the (life-)time drawn from the individual in this general participatory process. Think of working at a long-term job so that you have the long-term income to pay for the apartment where you have the house plants. Stability is a core value here to consider here as well — without long-term stability (a stable environment), exotic house plants are imperiled. To have house plants assumes this long-term stability (which the social system relies on!). So not only is this further reliance on the deployed ubicomp system NOT about liberation — it is the opposite — it is about a subtle enslavement to a greater social system for which instability is anathema. The drawing-off of the lifetime (and life energy) of the individual into that social system is the primary source of power for the centralized social system.

All of this is on a sliding scale. But assuming that condition, there likely is a certain tipping point where one might go too far and not have the possibility of retrieving individual autonomy. Where is this point? Have we reached it? Clearly it is different in different social systems, despite the healthy state of global systems which draw their energy from widely-dispersed humans. Tolerance for autonomy is different in different socio-cultural systems. Intolerance for instability is generally higher in more organized systems (which came first, the need for organization or the intolerance for instability and dis-order?)

posted
  • place: San Jose, California

May Day at Cadre

(01:22:43, stereo audio, 158.8 mb)

Head down to San Jose State University Art & Design Department to the Cadre Laboratory for New Media run by Joel Slayton for a seminar in their Speaker Salon presented by two of the principles of Neighborhood Public Radio, Lee Montgomery, and Jon Brumit.

Immediately prior to that I checked out some of the MFA exhibitions that were happening around the art building. Ran across some work by Wendy McDermott which was quite nice — refined metal objects dealing with narrative, stories, and her personal network.

Afterward, a small group of us retire to the Excelsior Hotel in downtown for expensive* drinks. Good to get some face time with this crew!

* (after I find the $51 parking ticket on the windshield of Nancy’s car, damn!)

posted
  • place: San Francisco, California

Oog

finally getting around to a good look at Oog, a curatorial project by Dutch artist Nanette Hoogslags curates at Volkskrant, a major Dutch daily newspaper. I happened to meet her for the first time when I was in Amsterdam last March when I had dinner with she and her husband, network activist David Garcia, an acquaintance of mine. Nanette comments on the current state of the project:

Oog is a commentary and opinion platform for the online edition of De Volkskrant, a major Dutch daily national newspaper. It began in September 2004 as a platform where every week a different artist working in sound and image is asked to respond to news and current affairs. The selection of artists participating has grown into a varied group of national and international artists working with very different forms of expertise and approaches. In this way, artists are using their skills to become commentators on events in a news environment. After each week, the work is placed in the archives, making the Oog collection accessible as a whole.
more “Oog”

posted
  • place: en route Helsinki - Turku - Helsinki, Finland

Digitally Yours

rising too early again, out to Turku with a few hard-cores to tour the exhibition Digitally Yours that Andy Best had curated. not enough sleep. even our tireless Pixelache host, Juha, was unable to roll out of bed in time for the train, so it ended up there were only five of us who actually made the trip, but it was well worth it.

begin to get a migraine after seeing the show at the Ars Nova museum — most of the artists were there, so we were able to interact with them directly. I recorded several of the talks, so, hope to get that online shortly. great also to have a bit of time to spend with Mukul and Manu with their deLightful boy.

Digitally Yours examines the relationship between technology and humanity. The exhibition maps out how everyday life and art have changed over the period when digital technologies have become commonplace. The artists in the exhibition all use digital technologies but their relationship to it is critical. They consider the relationship between man and machine, the dreams and promises, the realities and threats. The works in the exhibition ponder the fundamental questions of humanity in this globalized information networked world, while building on a new type of collaboration between the artist and the viewer.

Animaatiokone Industries (FI); Laura Beloff (FI) & Erich Berger (AT); Elina Mitrunen (FI); Chris Burden (US); Anita Fontaine (AU/US); Phil Coy (UK); Ed Burton (UK) & Zachary Lieberman (US); Juha Huuskonen (FI) & Tuomo Tammenpää (FI); Manu Luksch (AT/UK) Christian Nold (UK); Stanza (UK); Soda (UK); Markus Renvall (FI); Åsa Ståhl (SE) & Kristina Lindström (SE); Pia Tikka (FI)

on the way back, I get off before Helsinki to have dinner with David and Maria at their new place in the countryside. unfortunately, my head it really done in by then, so, I’m hardly good company. David drives me to Linnunlaulu where I finish packing. the migraine dissipates somewhat and I am able to go to the closing party for an hour to say goodbye to folks. then off to crash for another even earlier rise and 26 hours of travel torture.

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

long eventful day

not enough sleep after the dinner at Mokki with the Pixelache folks and the Prix Mobius people. finally caught up with Juhani who was on his way to Manchester today.

up early to meet Tapio at mbar for a short session about future polar/solar plans and dealing with future web-documentation and such.

then over to the gallery at noon to begin the final set-up. remote presence :: streaming life gets underway with preparations for the evening’s happening. all runs smoothly. except for the entire network going down about an hour before opening time. turns out to be one of those crazy glitches around a print job submitted to the wrong printer. it brought down everything for a tense 30 minutes before I could figure out what was happening. otherwise the transformation of the gallery space was completed some hours before the opening, and it looks very nice. did miss the final session of the conference with Lisa and Armin, as well as missing the last event of the Nordic VJ program. too busy.

many folks come to the opening — Antti, Bernice, Owen and his wife Irma, Kaisu, Amos, and on. I was not so able to chat much, monitoring the outgoing streams and incoming communications, but the vibe was good. the sonic stream is an interesting mix, though the video input was sparse and not so electric. we would need another couple days to spruce up that medium & means. the ambient sound in the gallery is warm and party-like:

(01:23:20, stereo audio, 161 mb)

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

ubiquitous Helsinki

(05:28, stereo audio, 11.8 mb)

Up early at Linnunlaulu for day one of Pixelache 2007. Ubiquitous Helsinki is name-dropped as a project, while the local wifi network goes down in the morning. So, no work gets done in the day. faugh. The context for the presentations remains heavily backgrounded. Projects are presented on platforms that are not grounded to any particular understanding of the larger global context (real sustainability, viability — too much technological determinism). Or the reality of what is going on now. hmmmm.

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

Remote Presence :: Streaming Life : info

[ED: Relevant to the recent “pulling plugs” post, and whilst migrating some workshop documentation from the static neoscenes site to the blog, here are the deets for a one-week workshop I facilitated in Helsinki in 2007—squeezed in between another workshop in Sydney and lectures at several universities in San Diego, Santa Barbara, London, Amsterdam, and Kiel. Busy times. (An associated essay In The Presence of Networks: A Meditation on the Architectures of Participation was published in the festival publication (pdf download)).]

Welcome! Following is more detailed information on the workshop presented by John Hopkins and brought to you by the pixelache2007 festival and Artists’ Association MUU in Helsinki, Finland.

Dates: March 21-23 & 26-31, 2007
Location: MUU gallery & Media Base, Lönnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki, Finland
Daily Hours: 1030 to 1630
Final Event 31 March, 2007, 1700 – 0200

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

In the ubiquity of networked media spaces where we distribute our wireless lives, what happens to our creative processes? How may we build a functioning architecture of participation for productive collaboration and interaction between the Self and Others?

This dynamic workshop will bring participants to a new state of awareness about their own creative practice. It will accomplish this through an exploration of human collaboration and connection within the space of networks. It explores conceptual and practical issues around creative engagement, culminating in the hands-on production of a live and online streaming-media network event with global participation.

PARTICIPANT PROFILE:

With an engaged and holistic approach to facilitation, the workshop is ideal for individuals working in any discipline; it is designed to draw in a wide range of students, from those working with ‘traditional’ art materials, independent artists working in new media OR old media; VJ’s and DJ’s; media, design, film, and art students; media art producers and directors; network technologists and designers; culinary, engineering, and IT students; collaborative software developers and users — all of these will gain a powerful perspective on their own creative practice. The workshop is open to anyone with an interest in online collaboration and creative engagement at both a local and remote scale. There are NO technical background requirements. People with previous experience in streaming media, performance, digital audio and video, VJ work, etc, who wish to push their practice to a new level are also welcome.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own creative works, backgrounds, networks, and impulses into the situation to maximize the potentials of open peer-to-peer engagement. We will finish the workshop with a re-vitalized creative practice, a new understanding of collaborative dynamics, and a deeper understanding of a wide range of technologies available for creative networking.

A maximum of 15 participants will be chosen from applicants with the idea to bring together a wide spectrum of cross-disciplinary energies.

TO APPLY:

!!!TOO LATE NOW, BUT IF YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THE WORKSHOP, EMAIL US
neopixel [at] pixelache.ac
THERE IS A WAITING LIST, YOU MAY YET STILL BE ABLE TO ATTEND!!!

THE DETAILS:

This workshop moves from concepts and theories of creative action to the actualities of a sustainable creative practice mediated by technological and human networks.Online collaborative visual/sonic activities and platforms succeed when facilitators/participants understand the dynamics of human network-building as well as the possible technologies involved. The politics of collaboration underlie much of the potential of technologically-mediated social interaction. We will address the complex social politics of technology and build a powerful model for the critical and creative engagement of media of all types.

There will be a substantial exploration of the subjects of:

  • – tactical media
  • – creativity
  • – social networking
  • – design of sustainable systems
  • – principles of human engagement
  • – networks vs hierarchic systems
  • – ad hoc networks
  • – human presence as mediated by technology
  • – social politics of technology
  • – technologies/skill sets engaged will include: audio and video production software & tools, VJ software, streaming media solutions, open-source platforms, protocols, physical computing, live performance platforms & tools, synchronous communications applications

The final day on the workshop will be a public/live/online event. It will be a multi-channel multi-screen collaborative happening with live/local and online/remote performance components coming together for several hours in a relaxed and experimental atmosphere. Workshop participants will not only develop content for the event, but will help facilitate all aspects of it including the technical infrastructure, the local ambience, and the remote coordination. A number of local artists will be invited to participate with sonic and visual inputs, along with remote streams coming from New York, Montreal, Sydney, Los Angeles, and other locations.

In the search for Architectures of Participation, the workshop:

  • – examines a wide range of issues beginning from a fundamental definition of technology through to absolutely contemporary technological developments that affect socio-political and cultural scenarios
  • – presents a highly-developed model for comprehending the complexities of human presence and creative action in the contemporary world
  • – facilitates deep dialogue on local social/cultural/technical issues along with other issues relevant to participants
  • – establishes a broad-ranging, inspiring, and critical context for engaging a wide variety of technologies
  • – provides a powerful context for self-development and development of collaborative activities by presenting and subsequently exercising fundamental skills and awareness
  • – provides a comfortable discursive space to explore a wide range of historical and contemporary developments of art and science
  • – maps out connections between creative processes and technological mediation
  • – develops a deeper praxis-based starting-point for participants, helping them identify their own creative sources and tendencies
  • – involves practice-based exercises to develop personal creative focus
  • – provides a supportive atmosphere for rapid collective knowledge-building and collaborative sharing

Bio for John Hopkins:

As an active network-builder with a background in engineering, hard science, and the arts, Hopkins practices a nomadic form of performative art and teaching that spans many countries and situations. He has taught workshops in more than 20 countries and 50 institutions across Europe and North America. Recent streaming performance nodes include Berlin, New York, Sydney, Helsinki, Riga, Amsterdam, Strasbourg, Santa Barbara, Winnipeg, San Francisco, and, of course, online. He studied film with renown experimental film-maker Stan Brakhage in the late 1980’s. He was recently artist-in-residence at the Sibelius Academy’s Center for Music and Technology in Helsinki, Finland. https://neoscenes.net

Brought to you by:

This workshop is a collaboration between: pixelache 2007, Artists’ Association MUU, and neoscenes.

posted
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Waag

the view from the living room. the Waag Society has one set of offices in the building to the right, on Nieuwmarkt, it’s the oldest secular structure in Amsterdam. this complex includes the Teatrum Anatomicum the best-known space to public dissections…

more “Waag”

posted
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

crossings

the accession to thought, and the impulse to create removes us from the flow of present be-ing. outside the Nieuwmarkt is noisy with tourists wandering in search of meaning, the people in the market stalls, selling, café sitters. with beer, coffee, lunch. enjoying a bit of early springtime afternoon sun. inside the tipping flat, where front wall is leaning drunkenly forward over the café tables set up on the brick sidewalk four floors below, inside, there is the atmosphere of closeted dis-knowing. but a dis-knowing in need of gradual release into a form.

no network. so discommunicator. decide to go to Montevideo to see David Garcia’s show of video works, Faith in Exposure — a project in which artists ‘talk back’ to the news media.

The exhibition addresses the central narrative of western democracy, our ‘faith in exposure,’ the unquestioning belief that the circulation of knowledge through the news media (and other means) constrains the powerful and guarantees democracy. In a world where we may know but are still compelled to obey, Faith in Exposure is a platform for artists and researchers to ask whether it is still tenable to believe the central myth of the information age: that knowing the truth shall make us free.

technical difficulties with a couple works. intriguing, some arrive at the tableau of just-more-media — in the process of projection in white cubes. how to disassemble the house of the master with the tools of the master. and find truth…

finally meet Sher. network crossings. dinner (red beet pasta with smoked mozzarella, mmmm! at Mappa), then on to an electric dance performance Anatomica#3 at the Korzo Theater by expatriate Canadian choreographer André Gringas. what to say. networks are alive because of the real energy going into them.

somehow I am surprised that Sher is American! all this time I was thinking that she was Dutch or something. another cultural refugee — thriving in Europe.

posted
  • place: en route Maastricht - Amsterdam, Netherlands

onwards

short morning with Rod. then off and about in the Light rain. just make the train by a minute despite leaving with plenty of time because of the bus driver shutting the bus down after a couple stops. reason? at the second stop about 40 high school kids get on, packing the bus, a couple stops later, while trying to sardine people onto the bus, he wants them to transfer to the bus behind him. they refuse, so he turns the bus off. and waits. interesting scene.

on to Amsterdam. to de Waag. some serious aerobics up to the third floor reception, am handed a phone and keys, then back over to the flat which sits on the south side of the Nieuwmarkt.

nice place. a single cold beer in the fridge. but the wifi from Waag does not quite cut across to the flat. sort of, but not quite. so I am offline for the weekend perhaps. though Sher says that the network should be accessible at the restaurant in the ground floor of de Waag. I’ll be checking that out tomorrow, for sure. and on for a dinner with Geert and Linda, Calin Dan, and Emile Zile.

The whole problem is one of abandoning a style of critical thought that is the very essence of our theoretical culture, but that in some sense comes under the head of a prior history and life; of carrying out, just as we have carried out a deterministic analysis of a deterministic society, an indeterministic analysis of an indeterministic society, a society that is fractal, random, exponential, one of critical mass and extreme phenomena, wholly dominated by relations of uncertainty. — Jean Baudrillard

posted
  • place: en route Brussels Midi, Belgium - Maastricht, Netherlands

more meetings

Bad night’s sleep again, not sure where that is coming from. Feng shui of hotel rooms. Don’t like hotels. Open window too noisy to sleep; closed, nose imitates room and stuffs. Maybe caffeine. Some small cups of coffee during meetings, not just to be polite, but it smells so good. So, wake up before alarm, force the obligatory liter of water down, gradually clear head. body drags along behind. pack, and hobble down to breakfast and wifi access to at least consume croissants and Eudora. And some Firefox. Though belly is fat and getting fatter. Can’t wait for a swim, cycle, something aerobic. But Dirk has made a tight schedule of luxurious 2-3 hour meetings with such an interesting variety of people. And so, this morning, he comes to breakfast a bit after Thomas Laureyssens comes tentatively to my table.

Excellent generation of ideas, intuitive connections, and pathways, dynamically evolving possibility. Thomas is working on a social networking project which aims to create a functional gateway for Belgian new media initiatives.

Brussels as the background. some good food, some short visions, hardly any time to catch the tourist scene, and no photographs made. Nothing missed on that account. Previous visits, the most recent was in 2000 for the closing cafe9.net meeting which ended up in the scandalous shouting match among participants at a Chinese restaurant. So much for European solidarity.

Dirk and Thomas head off after Angelo Vermeulen arrives for a short meeting before I have to catch the train to Maastricht.

Angelo illustrates my dialogue-based worldview with several direct anecdotes which counterpoint his prodigious and stimulating formal creative output. And reminds me a bit painfully the lack of a PhD is a deterrent to social viability. That or a book. So that story haunts again in the background. Text trumps lived praxis, title trumps actual presence. sheesh.

We have lunch at the Brasserie Falstaff with a nice interior where “you can admire the transition from Art Nouveau to Art Deco,” and the staff looking like they should be in a Paris bistro. And the pay toilets governed by a wrinkled old lady. Just the way it used to be. Mais oui! Typically touristic, with a complete backwards look to the future. Tourists would never distinguish that this is not real. Maybe tourists are so conditioned by looking at the world via tele-vision, that when confronted by the real thing, they cannot tell when it is a simulation of something else authentic. Like Disneyland. Seems like a great place to actualize physical presence in the ‘world’ when compared to prime-time teevee. uff!

(00:04:52, stereo audio, 9.4 mb)

Over to Maastricht, train to bus to Rod and Lizbet’s place. Nine years since last time. Catching up on years of remote art, music, books, Iceland gossip. Talk about getting more of Rod’s work online aside from the wiki page that a friend has done—he’s a networker, and a singular one of that breed, a networker’s networker. No time to worry about publicity, the market, promotion. The work and the network are all that counts, matters, all that provides life reason. His output into that network is prodigious, profound, and humane. His archive is priceless, marvelous!

posted
  • place: Kiel, Germany

lunar dreams

a nice network crossing late with Fernanda, in Berlin now, formerly from ISNM. in crisis mode, figuring out some steps to take next in life. she had written me a couple days back, after returning from a five-week holiday in Brazil visiting family, back to a deadening job in Berlin, in the angst of being alive, but having that vitality being drained by pointless and un-inspiring work. half the battle is not to fall asleep to the liveliness that surges up from life. not to allow the pressures of social production to compress dreams unless it is to press carbon into diamond. to make dreams fly with Lightness and certain brilliance. no matter what, though, is to not let life be weakened so much that each moment is lost to the dull and stultifying grind of labor. finding a labor that brings joy is a rare pleasure, but finding a life labor that brings some social recognition as well as that priceless joy is ever more unusual. surrounded and obscured in a matrix of dark matter, searching for a life that does not lack Light, what do we become?

so, we talk about these things, not quite strangers, but desiring to know the Other’s life and the path it takes, has taken, to bring us here. and then, there is the future.

Lunar Moon day 5
Year of the Red Overtone Moon

kin 141: Red Spectral Dragon
I Dissolve in order to Nurture
Releasing Being
I seal the Input of Birth
With the Spectral tone of Liberation
I am guided by my own power doubled
— from the Lunar Calendar site

the usual Light night’s sleep before travel. because of early rising and tight schedules. fog persists into the morning, the remains of the clouds that obscured the lunar eclipse last night.

posted
  • place: Kiel, Germany

Remote Presence :: Streaming Life : call for participation

Call for Workshop Applicants:

Remote Presence: Streaming Life

Presented by John Hopkins as part of the pixelache 2007 Architectures of Participation Festival and in collaboration with Artists’ Association MUU

Dates: March 21-23 & 26-31, 2007
Location: MUU gallery & Media Base, Lönnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki, Finland
Daily Hours: 1030 to 1630
Final Event 31 March, 2007, 1700 – 0200

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

In the ubiquity of networked media spaces where we distribute our wireless lives, what happens to our creative processes? How may we build a functioning architecture of participation for productive collaboration and interaction between the Self and Others?

This dynamic workshop will bring participants to a new state of awareness about their own creative practice. It will accomplish this through an exploration of human collaboration and connection within the space of networks. It explores conceptual and practical issues around creative engagement, finishing with the hands-on production of a live and online streaming-media network event with global participation.

The workshop is open to anyone from any discipline with an interest in collaboration and creative engagement at both a local and remote scale. There are NO technical background requirements. People with previous experience in streaming media, performance, digital audio and video, VJ work, etc, who wish to push their practice to a new collaborative level are also welcome.

On Saturday, 31 March, the final day of the workshop will be a live & online event. Workshop participants will not only develop digital content for the event, but will also help facilitate all aspects of it including the technical infrastructure, the local ambiance, and the remote coordination.

For detailed information visit:

https://neoscenes.net/blog/82803-remote-presence-streaming-life-info

A maximum of 15 participants will be chosen from local and international applicants with the idea to bring together a wide spectrum of cross-disciplinary energies.

THE WORKSHOP IS FREE OF CHARGE.

Those interested will need to send:

NAME:

LOCATION:

EMAIL:

Along with your reasons for interest in workshop and a brief background (studies, creative work, and activities) to:

neopixel@pixelache.ac

DEADLINE for Applications 5 March 2007.