posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

extinction

Consider the sum of all life, the heaped arrays of adaptations flung one after the next into the abundance of forms, each possessing codes pertaining only to its ancestors and its immediate predecessors, teeming organisms hefting around history in their cells, a library of each quirk and evolutionary indecision of the past 3.5 billion years, but only a record in each species of its single divergence from the source, with no register of errors or chance events gone awry because those were discarded to extinction, leaving a peculiar animal honed to a perfect set of symbols and codices, down to the Sonoran topminnow (Poeciliopsis occidentalis), perhaps soon to be vanquished from the planet. Protecting species is the same intrinsic gesture as preserving the original documents and constitutions of an entire civilization, or the love letters of grandparents.

Childs, Craig Leland. The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert. 1st paperback ed. Boston, MA: Back Bay Books, 2001.
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It has been pointed out …

It has been pointed out by Boltzmann that the fundamental object of contention in the life-struggle, in the evolution of the organic world, is available energy. In accord with this observation is the principle that, in the struggle for existence, the advantage must go to those organisms whose energy-capturing devices are most efficient in directing available energy into channels favorable to the preservation of the species.

Lotka, A.J., 1922. Contribution to the energetics of evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 8, pp.147-151.)

posted
  • place: Bremen, Germany

coupling

Thinking back: Walnut Cafe South in the Table Mesa Center, meet Chris for one of our weekly Boulder breakfast get-togethers.

Subject of resonance comes up. and the term coupling which I did not include in the dissertation discussion on resonance. Coupling is where two circuits designed to resonate actually transmit electromagnetic energy from one (the transmitting coil) to the other (receiving coil). This is used to do wireless power transmission. The two coils have to be in relatively close proximity otherwise there is significant power loss:

By designing electromagnetic resonators that suffer minimal loss due to radiation and absorption and have a near field with mid-range extent (namely a few times the resonator size), mid-range efficient wireless energy-transfer is possible. The reason is that, if two such resonant circuits tuned to the same frequency are within a fraction of a wavelength, their near fields (consisting of ‘evanescent waves’) couple by means of evanescent wave coupling. Oscillating waves develop between the inductors, which can allow the energy to transfer from one object to the other within times much shorter than all loss times, which were designed to be long, and thus with the maximum possible energy-transfer efficiency. Since the resonant wavelength is much larger than the resonators, the field can circumvent extraneous objects in the vicinity and thus this mid-range energy-transfer scheme does not require line-of-sight. By utilizing the magnetic field to achieve the coupling, this method can be safe, since magnetic fields interact weakly with living organisms.

(written in Wikipedia-English!)

Is there any way to explore if this occurs on some scale between organisms? Transmitters, receivers? Coupling? Would seem to be an obvious model for interactivity between any organisms — the question being what is the nature of the embodied resonant circuits? Can an organism or a part of one be modeled ‘properly’ as such a circuit? Or is it too complex — the electromagnetic ‘field’ of a body as a mass of overlapping radiations and flows — such that there is no comprehensible order? Nah, of course there is a ‘sensible’ order — that may be expressed as the general sensuality of ‘presence’ that a living organism exudes. (This presence signified by the dynamic of interaction that any single organism exhibits with other organisms — as defined by evolutionarily-developed interdependence.) For example predator/prey interactions would suggest that there are highly developed coupling mechanisms such that the predator can identify with a high degree of precision a potential prey.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

life is an informational phenomenon (abstract)

We extend the concept that life is an informational phenomenon, at every level of organisation, from molecules to the global ecological system. According to this thesis: (a) living is information processing, in which memory is maintained by both molecular states and ecological states as well as the more obvious nucleic acid coding; (b) this information processing has one overall function – to perpetuate itself; and (c) the processing method is filtration (cognition) of, and synthesis of, information at lower levels to appear at higher levels in complex systems (emergence). We show how information patterns, are united by the creation of mutual context, generating persistent consequences, to result in ‘functional information’. This constructive process forms arbitrarily large complexes of information, the combined effects of which include the functions of life. Molecules and simple organisms have already been measured in terms of functional information content; we show how quantification may extended to each level of organisation up to the ecological. In terms of a computer analogy, life is both the data and the program and its biochemical structure is the way the information is embodied. This idea supports the seamless integration of life at all scales with the physical universe.

Farnsworth, K.D., Nelson, J. & Gershenson, C., 2012. Living is information processing; from molecules to global systems. Available at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.5908.pdf.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

State of the Species

Agriculture gave humanity the whip hand. Instead of natural ecosystems with their haphazard mix of species (so many useless organisms guzzling up resources!), farms are taut, disciplined communities conceived and dedicated to the maintenance of a single species: us.

A tiny excerpt from a longish article in Orion, “State of the Species,” by Charles Mann. (see 1493) Here Mann explores principles of abundance and how species respond to a resource-rich environment.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

analogic lies

Man is the only organism known to use both the analogic and the digital modes of communication. The significance of this is still very inadequately understood, but can hardly be overrated. On the one hand there can be no doubt that man communicates digitally. In fact, most, if not all, of his civilized achievement would be unthinkable without his having evolved digital language. This is particularly important for the sharing of information about objects and for the time-binding function of the transmission of knowledge. And yet there exists a vast area where we rely almost exclusively on analogic communication, often with very little change from the analogic inheritance handed down to us from our mammalian ancestors. This is the area of relationship. Based on Tinbergen (1953) and Lorenz (1952), as well as his own research, Bateson (1955) has shown that vocalizations, intention movements, and mood signs of animals are analogic communications by which they define the nature of their relationships, rather than making denotative statements about objects. Thus, to take one of his examples, when I open the refrigerator and the cat comes, rubs against my legs, and mews, this does not mean “I want milk” — as a human being would express it — but invokes a specific relationship, “Be mother to me,” because such behavior is only observed in kittens in relation to adult cats, and never between two grownup animals. Conversely, pet lovers often are convinced that their animals “understand” their speech. What the animal does understand, needless to say, is certainly not the meaning of the words, but the wealth of analogic communication that goes with speech. Indeed, wherever relationship is the central issue of communication, we find that digital language is almost meaningless. This is not only the case between animals and between man and animal, but in many other contingencies in human life, e.g., courtship, love, succor, combat, and, of course, in all dealings with very young children or severely disturbed mental patients. Children, fools, and animals have always been credited with particular intuition regarding the sincerity or insincerity of human attitudes, for it is easy to profess something verbally, but difficult to carry a lie into the realm of the analogic.

Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J.H. & Jackson, D.D., 1967. Some Tentative Axioms of Communication. In Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

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Talk of the Nation

This morning, listening to Talk of the Nation, hosted by Neal Conan with a program on the Colorado River from the Aspen Institute. I sent the following email part of which Neal ended up reading on air:

[Hi Neal!]

[Great topic, important to my life!]

I just spent 2 months traveling around Western Colorado, seeing the effects of this year’s especially intense drought, with rivers all down to August levels as early as April… A river is a crucial element in sustaining everything in the West, and most people just have no clue how crucial it really is!

[As someone who has spent years in the back country of Colorado (an alumni of the Colorado School of Mines and University of Colorado Boulder), I have always recommended that anyone living in the West read the book “Cadillac Desert” which explores the (disastrous!) history of water development in the West. Humans, as with any living organism, affect the surrounding environment. The Colorado River is no exception and has been brutally controlled and diverted, rendering in the long term an unsustainable system.]

Spend time on the Yampa River, the only uncontrolled tributary left in the Colorado system, and one sees immediately that a living (uncontrolled) river is so completely different from a controlled one!

John Wesley Powell suggested that the Western water problem could have been solved much easier if the geopolitical boundaries of cities, and states were drawn along watersheds rather than arbitrarily along other ways. Since it’s not the case, there are completely intractable legal issues around use, ownership, and sustainability of the whole system.

Cheers,
John

[I used my Melbourne sig file, so, I’m identified as “John from Australia” ;-]

The program was not so in depth, but Sandra Postel, one of the guests, is an articulate and focused advocate on global water issues. She’s one of the authors of Rivers For Life.

posted
  • place: Glade Park, Colorado

power is energy is power is order

Watching Adam Curtis’ fascinating series Pandora’s Box, subtitled A Fable from the Age of Science. It’s a six part 1992 BBC documentary television series which examines the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism. Felipe on bricolabs pointed it out a few weeks ago. It’s a doco of unique style and content (filled with brilliant fragments of BBC archival material). The general subject is the rise of the technocratic society globally — the systems men of the Cold War, colonial technocracies, and so on. The episodes deal, in order, with communism in the Soviet Union; systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War; economy in the United Kingdom during the 1970s; the insecticide DDT; Kwame Nkrumah’s leadership in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s; and the history of nuclear power.

Curtis illustrates with great subtlety the connections between politics, economics, technology, and power, not to mention pointing out the obvious causes of much human misery: greed.

Part 5 “Black Power” explores the relationship between development in Ghana, colonial conceits, corporate and general human greed, as it suggests the deep connections between the distortions introduced by large-scale development and the fabric of a human system. Yet another example of the scalar independence of the distortions that organismic life imposes on its surrounds.

The retro feel from Curtis’ exclusive use of archive material always feels relevant rather than stylistic although the opening sequence is a bit annoying. Overall, though, an edifying and profound point of view on the contemporary developed world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlJ6gNMvrfc
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Model assumptions: Dynamic Energy Budgets

  • There are two state variables: structural body volume and energy reserve density.
  • There are six energy fluxes: assimilation; somatic maintenance; somatic growth; maturation; maintenance of the state of maturity; and reproduction. These energy fluxes are irreversible.
  • There are maximally three life stages: embryo’s, which neither feed nor reproduce; juveniles, which may feed but do not reproduce; and adults, which may feed and reproduce.
  • The rate of food uptake is proportional to the surface area of an organism, and is a hyperbolic function of the food density.
  • Energy assimilated from food becomes part of the reserves. The dynamics of the energy reserve density are first order, with a rate that is inversely proportional to the length of an organism.
  • A fixed fraction of the energy flowing out of the reserves is used by somatic tissue (somatic maintenance and growth), and the remainder is used for maturity maintenance, and maturation or reproduction (stored until reproductive event); maintenance demands have priority. This partitioning of energy cancels when somatic maintenance needs cannot be fulfilled; then somatic maintenance demands have priority.
  • The chemical compositions of structure and reserves are constant. Thus, the following are constant:
    • the conversion efficiency of food into energy;
    • the cost to maintain a unit of structure;
    • the cost to form a unit of structure;
    • the cost to maintain the acquired state of maturity;
    • the cost to mature a unit of structure;
    • the cost to form a unit of reproductive matter.
  • Life stage transitions occur when the cumulative amount of energy that is spent on maturation exceeds a threshold. An embryo initially has a negligible amount of structure. With eggs, the energy reserve density of the embryo at hatching equals that of its mother during egg formation. A foetus develops at a rate that is independent of the reserve density of the mother; at birth, its energy reserve density equals that of the mother. Micro-organisms divide into daughter cells a constant interval after the initiation of DNA replication; replication starts at a threshold size.
  • There is one state variable for each toxic compound: the density of that toxicant in the aqueous fraction of structure.
  • There is one independent compartment: the aqueous fraction of structure. The density of toxicant in the aqueous fraction of structure is always in equilibrium with the toxicant density in other parts of the body (dry fraction of structure, reserves and stored resources for reproduction). Toxicants are exchanged with the ambient through the aqueous fraction of structure.
  • Toxicants in ingested food are assimilated with a constant efficiency. Other toxicants in the environment are taken up at a rate that is proportional to the surface area of an organism and the ambient toxicant concentration.
  • The rate of toxicant removal (excluding the release of reproductive matter) is proportional to the surface area of an organism and the toxicant density in the aqueous fraction of structure.
  • Toxicants do not affect energy budgets when their density in the aqueous fraction of structure is below a fixed value, the no-effect concentration (NEC). At higher levels, the effective toxicant concentration is proportional to the density in the aqueous fraction of structure corrected for the NEC.
  • The flow of energy declines as a hyperbolic function of the effective toxicant density. Demand driven fluxes (maintenance demands) are compensated such that the net commitment to maintenance increases linearly with the effective toxicant concentration.
  • Toxicants act on different energy fluxes with equal strength.
Nisbet, R.M., Effects of Metal Toxicants on the Energy Budgets of Marine Organisms: A Modeling Approach. Available at: https://www.coastalresearchcenter.ucsb.edu/scei/Metaltox.html.
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recalling Varela

…[T]he last 15 years have witnessed the ascent of an alternative view, that of embodied or enactive cognition. This new wave arose because the computationalist doctrine failed to account even for the most elementary coping with the world: walking, perceiving object in a natural setting, imagination. Slowly the cards turned into considering that the basis of mind is the body in coupled action, that is, the sensory-motor circuits establish the organism as viable in situated contexts. From this perspective the brain appears as a dynamical process (and not a syntactic one) of real time variables with a rich self-organizing capacity (and not a representational machinery). So in this sense the mind is not in the head since it[‘s] roots [are] in the body as a whole and also in the extended environment where the organism finds itself.

– Francisco Varela, Cosmos Web Forum letter 12e (1998?)

posted
  • place: Arvada, Colorado

changing the course of nature

Changing the course of nature, a series of actions, grew out of a fundamental principle that the embodied and living Self (as organism) alters the existing flows of the ambient natural system — the system which the Self is (merely) the energized extension of. If one envisions life itself as being a negentropic phenomena occurring as part of a field of energy without known limit, then it makes some recursive sense that a life-form would seek to extend the alteration of the flows that are moving around it, through it. Predation is a form of this, eating, consuming; sensing even could be construed to be an alteration (as Quantum) confirms — that the observer changes that which is observed. Alteration, fluctuation, change occurs at all scales.

One easily accessible phenomena that presents the idea of energy flow with a certain universal precision and intuitive simplicity is water. Fluid flow surrounds the body in water vapors, airs, sprays, and floods, while we also consume this flow directly, finding necessary sustenance for the body-system. Although the internal system is, topologically, simply an extension of the surface area of the external skin — both skin and gut are sensitive interfaces with submerging energized flows — with liquid energy flows everywhere.

Life speeding up entropy …
more “changing the course of nature”

posted
  • place: Arvada, Colorado

natural selection

It has been pointed out by Boltzmann that the fundamental object of contention in the life-struggle, in the evolution of the organic world, is available energy. In accord with this observation is the principle that, in the struggle for existence, the advantage must go to those organisms whose energy-capturing devices are most efficient in directing available energy into channels favorable to the preservation of the species.

Lotka, A.J., 1922. Contribution to the Energetics of Evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 8, pp.147–151.

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the meta-structures of creativity

if creativity cannot be taught, cannot be ‘made’ to happen, how best to approach the assumption that it can be fostered or stimulated within situations?

one answer to this is a consideration of the meta-structure of flows that characterize a particular situation. I have talked about meta-structures elsewhere. to begin with, each instance itself is only ‘separated’ from everything else through a process of abstracted defining. separation is an abstraction, a reduction of the actuality of holistic, immersed, and connected being and presence. so, best not to consider separation, distinction, and particularities. rather, retain a sensibility to all possible flows, or flow in general. easy to say, despite the (English) language being wholly insufficient to deal with such concepts. (Csikszentmihalyi is pretty good at making a natural language argument for flow, though he comes from a completely different direction than me, the conclusions are similar, will explore that when I shuffle through some of the references…)


more “the meta-structures of creativity”

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hmmm, interesting, 1951

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

…snip…
more “hmmm, interesting, 1951”

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projection of control

Okay, so in the process of simplifying last week’s posting — 08 Jan — I’ve got to take yet another look at how control is projected by an organism. Or maybe that should be a question — does an organism exert control over its environment? Or does it merely synergize with the flows that are available to it? What affect does the neurophysiological field of action of a particular organism exert on the localized situation? Primitive neuro-systems read gradients or difference that ‘matter’ to their existence. Quantifying these existing gradients of energy relates to an organism’s ability to find the energy sources through which it survives to prolong its life and procreate. This is the fundamental means by which life has prolonged itself on the planet continuously since it began. The existence and control of thermal (heat) energy gradients are also extremely important in the regulation of internal physiological systems through direct biochemical reaction-rate regulation. The surface or edge of an organism is clearly ‘signified’ in thermodynamic and physical terms; the maintenance of internal gradients might be called ‘control’ where the control is a function of defining the primary limit of the organism’s field of action. hmmm.

posted
  • place: Whanganui, New Zealand

Energy, Creative Action, and Sustainable Systems Workshop – Day 8 – eNZed

The official blurb for the workshop:

This workshop will draw on Hopkins’ international experience in facilitating creative encounters in the context of the Temporary Autonomous Zone. With an open structure for engaged and focused dialogue, the workshop will explore a powerful energy-based worldview that can open up new awareness of social, cultural, and natural systems. The dynamics of collaborative human relations confined within an attentive space is guaranteed** to generate provocative and inspiring outcomes. Creativity is, by definition, about the formative flow of energy between living organisms. We will move through a variety of environments (including on the river by waka) as we share life-time in the workshop. The workshop will augment the processes of any creative practitioner with a profound, situated, and practice-oriented conceptual toolbox that address the following areas and more:

(Keywords in no particular order): energy, creativity, thermodynamics, technology and techno-social systems, art, attention, entropy, learning, media, networks, participation, process, virtuality, creative action, human presence, Light, human encounter, mediation, concentration, optimization, pathways, meals, sustainability, simplicity, synchronicity, auspiciousness, and serendipity.

**on the condition that you bring along your entire Self, not merely your body, mind, and spirit

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

schizophonia

Originally all sounds were originals. They occurred at one time and in one place only. Sounds were then indissolubly tied to the mechanisms which produced them. The human voice traveled only as far as one could shout. …

We have split the sound from the maker of the sound. Sounds have been torn from their natural sockets and given an amplified and independent existence. Vocal sound, for instance, is no longer tied to a hole in the head but is free to issue from anywhere in the landscape. In the same instant it may issue from millions of holes in millions of public and private places around the world.

Schafer, R. Murray. (2006). The Music of the Environment in “Audio Culture.” New York: Continuum International Publishers.

This Julian Treasure talk is a very short (seven minute) but provocative dance around some issues of sound and hearing (and listening).

By substituting the concept ‘energy’ for ‘sound’ the issue expands and finds some wider principles. Action, activity, creative and destructive both, releases energy. Many times this energy is in the form of sound. Techno-social systems generate massive amounts of waste energy in this form of sonic vibrations. Living organisms tend not to generate waste sounds as any wasted energy possibly compromises the life-form (life being a negentropic energy-optimizing process). On an evolutionary scale, waste energy (in the form of adaptive experimentation by the life-form) is incrementally minimal when considered in juxtaposition to the total energy expenditure of the life-form itself. However, en masse life clearly plays a role in accelerating the production of entropy of the Terran system when considered in comparison to a planetary system without life.

Humans, in their superficially intelligent pursuit of technological solutions, especially in the recent era, have created the means to generate tremendous amounts of waste energy. While engineering is about solving problems in the most efficient manner possible, the vast majority of devices created are clearly inefficient. This is especially apparent when the entire process necessary to bring a device to a completed configuration is considered, ensemble — that is, the extraction of earth materials, transport, processing, and manufacturing.

Whenever one has a technological process, it is likely that at one or more points in the process, sonic waste energy is being spewed out into the surroundings. This plethora of waste energy impinges on the body system with (un)certain results. (Remember the experiments of playing heavy metal or classical music at plants? It’s easier to understand the effects when you consider the energy content of the two different sonic manifestations.) In a typical urban environment, a tremendous amounts of (sonic) waste energy is, literally, reverberating everywhere. Any flux of (waste) energy will change that which it encounters. It will change the energy state of everything along its pathway to eventual almost-dissolution in the un-stellar void.

Using your ears to guide you, find a place where you can comfortably be for an hour. If eyes desire — sight falling between night sky stars tracing on the retina — could carry the ears to a same-such place, life would have different potential.

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bricoleurs

abira_a, acracia, adrianobf, agger, agryfp, ale, alejo, alewei, anais.gabaut, andrea.mayr, andreslov4, ann.light, aoifejohanna, arlequim, armin, arrow.training, asbesto, atteqa, befree, ben.schouten, beppo, blauloretta, brian.degger, bronac, brunotarin, burbano, ca, calnoguiera, camilacorazza, catadores, cgfoster, christian, circletide, ciron, contact, cristiano, danilo_to, danlatorre.tint, davidg, desislaciones, dmartins, doma, doutorsocrateseidofutebol, drew, drica, edycop, eiriniskouta, ellen.sluis, erwann.thoraval, feijun, felipefonseca, fernandorabelo, filippo.gianetta, francesca.bria, fredbomba, freire, frontierlab, g.a.jones1, gif, gif, giles, gnu2007_dyne, habib, hdimantas, hellekin, henk, ho, honzasvasek, info, irlawence, ivanovic900, j.j.froehlich, jakeharries, james, jaromil, jean.habib, jerneja99, jhopkins, jnm, john.haltowanger, john, jonpaludan, josephgray, jp, juhuu, junk.bitte, k, khuramsdesk, ki.ber, kikomayorga, kovats, kranenbu, kurt, laubanech, laura, lurker, mail, maja, marc.garrett, matt.ratto,matt.trivett, mathew t. craig, mickfuzz, miles, myers.alex, nameeraa, nancy, nmagnan, nynke, olivierschulbaum, organismo,orlandosillva,osfa, phumphreys, patrice, paulo.hartmann, pauloandringa, paulolara, penelope.di.pixel, philippe.langlois, pvelezbr, rafael, ramsespetronia,rbrazileiro, rdom, ricardopalmieri, rm, root, rui, ruth.catlow, scur, shulea, siliamoan, soenke, sonjavank, sskoutas, tapio, tati.xx, thenetworked,theoparmakis, thomas, tiagobugarin, tnovaes, tomak, tvlibre, udrugauke, vanessa, venzha, vickysinclair, vilson, vjpixel, vladfiscutean, voodoo_rays, w, web33_matthieu, yannick.rumpala, yasir.media, yb, yto.lab

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tool-making and control

Nadine's hand, Alsace, France, June 1988

If one constructs a tool, what is one doing, and why is one doing it? How will one do it?

How to control of flows around oneself? And what does this control mean? Where does the desire to control arise from? Is it simply about evolutionary (survival/procreative) pressures? Is there anything about control that is altruistic (or simply outside of the broadly evolutionary imperative)?

The divide between life-forms that make tools and ones that don’t is fundamental, but it may be ignored when regarding the smooth continuum framing life as a system(?) that alters the flows of energy around it generally to its advantage (or to its need to continue — life is about life needing to continue life). The divide then appears to arise only when one considers how (from a mechanistic p.o.v.) that control is exerted.

mine, Bitburg, Germany, July 1988

This divide seems especially arbitrary when the body itself may be seen as a tool. The mechanical relations between bone structures, for example, or the magnifying ability of the lens in the eye. And, extending the definition of tool beyond the purely mechanical to, say, chemical, the body is a clearly a refinery in the exact same sense as a petroleum refinery. It conducts a wide-ranging set of thermodynamically driven reactions to access and distribute concentrated energy sources that it has introduced to its system. While there is a material dividing plane, the skin, which historically looms largely absolute in determining many classifications of relation and order, that plane may also be seen as arbitrary. The surface tissues — including the entire gut and lungs — are highly permeable surfaces which are constantly interchanging matter and energy with the environment they are in. In an optimal sense, at a particular time, this interchange process does not degrade the general order of the biotic system, but it does precipitate localized and systemic change. Also to be considered are the millions of microscopic organisms which synergize with the larger human body system — without which that system would likely not survive.

Andrea, Jersey City, New Jersey, May 1988

Are there, then, distinctions to be made based on body-as-tool and the ‘external’ tool that the body/mind system synthesizes? Or are these distinctions merely artifacts of the entire mechanistic p.o.v.?

It would seem so. If one considers, again, the relations within the body between , say, limb or organ, where a part may be seen as having a particular function which benefits or affects another part. A particular part has a function (as any tool also has) which aids in the performance of the body-system and interacts with other specific mechanisms in the body. In a living body-system these inter-relations are both necessary and sufficient if one includes the those moving between the body and the external. The body is seen as an indivisible whole, but without the constant interactions with the external environment, it would, for practical purposes, dis-integrate immediately.

The point of this short meditation is to emphasize the process which a tool, by definition, precipitates. That process is the fundamental alteration of the energy flows to which the tool is applied. This process unites the purpose of both internal and external systems for energy flow change which may be seen as a tool. The body is a technology as much as anything external to it which causes an alteration of extant energy flows. (Uff, this suggests that life itself be defined as a technology as it always alters the flows around it — we are life, we alter the flows around us, we are a technology.)

The division between tool-makers and those organisms which do not make tools may then be seen as a somewhat arbitrary one. Both organisms are needful of altering the surrounding flows to survive, they actualize that need via evolved mechanisms as they relate with those particular flows. The ultimate point for both internal and external tool use is the optimized continuance of life.

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difference, edges

Meanwhile, thinking about difference and edges. Organisms are distinguished by defined/refined difference between themselves and that-which-surrounds through changes in the characteristics of the field/flux. There is also an internal(ized) sensitivity to difference that arises in an organism — as an evolutionary trait related to the search for usable energy gradients as a source for ensuing negentropic action or use. Distinguishing difference: how does it arise and proceed? Or is the energy gradient, a fundamental expression of difference, difference itself? Skin seems to be absolute and abrupt but in fact is a layered, gradational transition from Self to what is out there. And, in fact, if there is a continuous energized substrate within/below/of all, there is only difference in relatively and locally definable by characteristics which are circumscribable with non-absolute frames of reference … sheesh …

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

The uncontrolled gesture: go to your edge

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

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

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Weltanschauung

The construction of a worldview is a process of feedback, memory, and resonance with that memory arising out of an awareness of difference.

We know remarkably little about the ground functions of practically the entire system we are embedded within.

Writing an idiosyncratic worldview oscillates between the interior and exterior of being. It moves through all culture and social systems, the natural world, and every code encoded, every text ever written. To this passage is mixed lived impression, the accumulate energized traces that life leaves on the body — traces that, ultimately, are memory. And through memory, life compares these two strands: difference arises.

Traces of word and traces of where and when word arrived into the body-system: spoken, written, the two means to no end. Each in arrangement, in relation with an Other, Others. The relation to the Other defined by inarticulate resonance framed and directed into word, and left as traces both embodied and those dis-embodied, change left behind as bodies pass by. more “Weltanschauung”

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NWS, Australia

more Buber

Human dialogue, therefore, although it has its distinctive life in the sign, that is in sound and gesture (the letters of language have their place in this only in special instances, as when, between friends in a meeting, notes describing the atmosphere skim back and forth across the table), can exist without the sign, but admittedly not in an objectively comprehensible form. On the other hand an element of communication, however inward, seems to belong to its essence. But in its highest moments dialogue reaches out even beyond these boundaries. It is completed outside contents, even the most personal, which are or can be communicated. Moreover it is completed not in some ‘mystical’ event, but in one that is in the precise sense factual, thoroughly dovetailed into the common human world and the concrete time-sequence. more “more Buber”

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

another 50th

I stick around for Chris’ 50th as his folks, John and Barbara, also come into town on their way between Iowa and Tucson. nice to catch up with them. Barbara reminds me about her chocolate-chip cookies when she mentions she doesn’t have any with her. this references the care packages she would send to Chris when he and I were room-mates back at 148 Washington in Golden — she would usually include a tin of her fabulous cookies which Chris would share generously. got to snag the recipe someday. or, film her making them.

all this visiting. catching up. exploring territories. hearing stories. mapping out lives. recitations, prognostications on weather and politics and social systems. sampling lives. and seeing time pass forwards inexorably.

keeping up appearances (the cost of social participation), requires energy. energy paid into the system. (was this the lament of the Man?) versus what? appearing as The Self is and allowing for personal idiosyncrasy, proceed with no particular thought as to impact, just to channel what comes in life.

Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART … EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who — from his state of freedom — the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand — learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER. — Joseph Beuys

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)

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

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

John Hopkins

https://neoscenes.net/

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

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

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

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

posted

thesis proposal :: Basics

Title

Sonic Presence Within The Networked Regime of Amplification

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

Subject

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

Outcomes

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

Keywords

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

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado - Berlin, Germany

Migrating Academies: Régime

migrating academies: regime, Boulder, Colorado - Berlin, Germany, November 2008

Migrating Régime begins in Berlin. (a photo from Edwina of a group interpretation of the dialogue assignment, hmmm?) I run a seminar/performance/facilitation on Monday, and will be randomly intervening during the week. not as fun as embodied presence, but hey, what can be done. so, from Boulder to Berlin. the next best thing to being there… so, about presence:

The expression of presence is an essential characteristic of the self-organized body-system. Presence is the announcement of be-ing and viability and requires first an inflow and then an outflow of energies from the body system through the conversion of energies from one form to another. This conversion process alters the entire fabric of local existence. Migration of the embodied and energized organism changes everything around it. What do you change around you? What is changed by those around you?

Shared presence is a dialogue of transformation and change. It is the crux of be-ing.

(00:03:45, stereo audio, 9 mb)

or

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

The Regime of Amplification: A Primer

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

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

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

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

KEY TERMS

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

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

spring

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

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

posted
  • place: Rushcutters Bay, Australia

pre-amped

Amplification is a primary function of molecular cascades (selective reduction of environmental cues—which are essentially electromagnetic energy impinging on sensory receptors). The process requires that an organism has a consistent surplus of energy to provide the necessary amplification of signal. Often amplification factors are in excess of 1000x in the case of optic nerve stimulation by a single photon and the subsequent processes unleashed in the nerve cell. An organism needs consistently and readily available energy source(s) to improve the possibility of survival-to-reproduction. But why does reproduction play such a big role in a discrete/single organism’s existence?—to simply continue life—or is life a continuum within which all organisms are connected by nature?

It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of ‘equilibrium’ that an organism appears so enigmatic… What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive.

Schrödinger, Erwin. What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
posted
  • place: Helsinki, FInland

In The Presence of Networks: A Meditation on the Architectures of Participation

ED: This essay was included in the Pixelache07 publication download a full pdf of that. (2.1 mb)

Architectures of Participation is a compelling phrase that attempts literally to frame a deeper fundamental of human existence. This text is a preliminary meditation on that existence and aspects of its profound presence.

On the immediate surface, the phrase suggests the grandiose, the monumental, and the static and rigid hegemony of brick-and-mortar — a suggestion that appears to contravene the deeply dynamic nature of the broader continuum of human relation. This continuum, generated in part through participatory actions, is a far more fundamental space that circumscribes much of our passing presence in this world. We will have to dig deep to find the foundations.

Participation is one reductive descriptor that applies to the infinite range of personal energies expressed and shared during our lived be-ing. Participation is a condition that does not leave our lives until we leave our lives. Participation starts when life starts with the participatory synergy of reproduction. This prototypical participatory act is phenomenal in that the energies of two human beings combine to create the presence of a third human being. Participation is the root of life. Participation follows life in the synergies of parent with child, friend with friend, partner with partner, colleague with colleague, stranger with stranger. We participate in life, in living, every moment.

more “In The Presence of Networks: A Meditation on the Architectures of Participation”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Partial Description of the World

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

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

posted
  • place: Phoenix, Arizona

air-conditioning

long exhausting day in the belly of the health-care sector. pre-operative testing for Dad. bad air, bad organization, bad system. surfaced the heavy body impact of air-conditioning. humans in Phoenix live a majority of their summer lives in artificial atmospheres. moving from air-conditioned to air-conditioned space like they were on Mars or something, airlocks and everything. can’t stand it. when it’s 115F (45C) outside, and 70F (18C) inside, the body reels from thermal shock every time.

The ways in which air-conditioners work to “clean” the air can inadvertently cause health problems, too. One such way is with the use of an electrostatic precipitator, which removes dust and smoke particles from the air. What precipitators also do, however, is emit large quantities of positive air ions into the ventilation system. A growing number of studies show that overexposure to positive air ions can result in headaches, fatigue and feelings of irritation.

Large air-conditioning systems add water to the air they circulate by means of humidifiers. In older systems, the water used for this process is kept in special reservoirs, the bottoms of which provide breeding grounds for bacteria and fungi which can find their way into the ventilation system. The risk to human health from this situation has been highlighted by the fact that the immune systems of approximately half of workers in air-conditioned office buildings have developed antibodies to fight off the organisms found at the bottom of system reservoirs. Chemical disinfectants, called “biocides”, that are added to reservoirs to make them germ-free, are dangerous in their own right in sufficient quantities, as they often contain compounds such as pentachlorophenol, which is strongly linked to abdominal cancers. Finally, it should be pointed out that the artificial climatic environment created by air-conditioners can also adversely affect us. In a natural environment, whether indoor or outdoor, there are small variations in temperature and humidity. Indeed, the human body has long been accustomed to these normal changes. In an air-conditioned living or work environment, however, body temperatures remain well under 37C, our normal temperature. This leads to a weakened immune system and thus greater susceptibility to diseases such as colds and flu.

posted
  • place: Fishers Towers, Utah

desert moon

another place.

The wind will not stop. Gusts of sand swirl before me, stinging my face. But there is still too much to see and marvel at, the world very much alive in the bright Light and wind, exultant with the fever of spring, the deLight of morning.

Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert Light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms.

Love flowers best in openness and freedom.

***

Dehydration: the desert air sucks moisture from every pore. I take a drink from the canvas water-bag dangling near my head, the water cooled by evaporation. Noontime here is like a drug. The Light is psychedelic, the dry electric air narcotic. To me the desert is stimulating, exciting, exacting; I feel no temptation to sleep or to relax into occult dreams but rather the opposite effect which sharpens and heightens vision, touch, hearing, taste and smell. Each stone, each plant, each grain of sand exists in and for itself with a clarity that is undimmed by any suggestion of a different realm. Claritas, integritas, veritas. Only the sunLight holds things together. Noon is the crucial hour: the desert reveals itself nakedly and cruelly, with no meaning but its own existence. — Edward Abbey

Abbey, E., 1971. Desert solitaire: a season in the wilderness, New York: Ballantine Books.
posted
  • place: en route Helsinki, Finland - Tallinn, Estonia

Technicolor yawns

back in Estonia after a rough catamaran ride across the Baltic. in the open sea, waves were cresting 3-4 meters. not being a seafaring-type-dude, this was a bit intense. most people in the boat were “yawning in Technicolor” as it were … the stewardesses handing out plastic bags constantly. didn’t upset my stomach, but it was disorienting and even caused an occasional white-knuckle grab of the armrests when cresting a wave and going for the trough. the swells were almost broadsides, and although it seemed that the ship had an effective stabilization system, there were a few moments where I was wondering how cold the water was if the need to swim suddenly arose. meet Ivika at the Academy lobby, along with Shawn, a Canadian electro-acoustic musician and Polar Circuiter. the Media Lab here is still undergoing construction, but appears to be a viable organism. my lecture for this evening starts at 1600.

done with one group contact here. the usual eclectic array of intelligent, sentient beings.

posted
  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

spinal slug

yesterday slips into today. in artificial suspension, missing my job, my mission, to network. floating between things. so. and the days get longer. and Berlin looms. keeping wits and senses completely unpretentious. aware that ALL contacts need to be sustained with good information flow. the extreme movement requires high-volume information flow. (like fast-moving animals have highly developed nervous systems for receiving and processing sensory data). speed is related to nervous system. the faster the nervous system, the greater the organism’s potential for terminal velocities! and the hard-wiring of the back can’t take the speed anymore.

posted
  • place: en route Helsinki, Finland - Reykjavík, Iceland

Russian wind

done. moved out. strange not to be back in Helsinki for such a long time. probably the longest time in some years. although, technically, I will be jumping through on return flights for over-night or same-day transfers. the wind is still from Russia. last night when dropping some bags off for storage in the basement at Susanna and Tapio’s place, there is a broadcast, a documentary about the nearest Russian nuclear reactor. a map of Europe flashes on the screen with a radiation symbol in the middle of a huge green circle, apparently illustrating a what-if situation of the order of magnitude of Chernobyl. hoboy. wondering in the night, it is a questions of energies. in the same moment scientists claim to have reduced the most primitive form of life to it’s minimum set of genetic code, gradually removing useless DNA sequences to see if the organism dies, as though they are standing on the brink of becoming gods that can take a pot of that minimum chain, and make life. I pity their ignorance. and fear for the future.

posted
  • place: en route Tornio - Rovaniemi - Helsinki, Finland

strikes

in Rovaniemi. bus to bus to bus to plane to bus to taxi. underway for four hours already, and still have a plane, bus, taxi to deal with. just to get from Tornio to Helsinki during an Air Traffic Controllers strike. without reading Finnish, it is outside possibility to understand the detailed dynamics of the negotiations. how can anyone, experienced in cross-cultural and linguistic situations, have any real faith/trust/belief in this monolithic stance that journalism and the media somehow have a corner on the truth market. knowing the slippery interface between two persons speaking the same language and having similar backgrounds, and the zoomed-in intensity of crossing even the most basic cross-platform linguistic barrier. in all cases, meaning is stripped to its essential lowest-common-denominator packet-form. in the worst case, it is lost. and in between these two translation polarities, there is a massive area where few things can be pegged, many data-feeds mis-routed, and substantial interstitial gaps in the matrix of human expression. travel makes me stress — all the time. can it be? that a human will undertake to set a daily condition of being that MOST stresses the core neural network of the organism itself? being human. chomp down on some Ibuprophen and aspirin dragged along from the last visit to the US. never am able to get the right over-the-counter drugs outside the US for some reason — just don’t know which ones to get. though I hardly ever use any medicines stronger than Tiger Balm or so. faugh! so I try to rewire language. adding contemporary terms to replace the ancient. but it is all the same — using cross-platform instead of transformative. while language is being constantly fed by the media, by writers (script-writers, mostly, and technocrats and geeks), its core senses do always reflect ancient knowledge-bases. one of the greatest challenges is educating across a language barrier — at the same time, reducing ones own knowledge and experience base to packets that can be shunted across this formidable interface gap. especially useful is a reliance on pure energy, force-of-self to heave these things across. and a very quiet, sensitive ear for hearing where the receivers place these energies within their experience. and sensing what these energies engender in the Other. mapping both the generative and reflexive energies of the Other. I don’t push this hard enough in the Art-Context, though. or with the mediations I have used for so many years. relying instead on the ephemeral, the transient, the sole ambient experience. un-documented, face-to-face, momentary. back in Helsinki. again. and again. sitting in a hotel room. watching cable. media-child, show about fashion. reflecting on the few times at Studio 54 and the Palladium in the Big Apple. knowing the underside of THAT business. images of Manhattan, photography, art directors, designers, fashion houses, headliners, mainliners, winners and losers.