Life, or what’s left of it changes to a different ground state. Still indeterminate, still challenging, still energized. with others, with the self, with the world, with all perceived, all known, all thought of, all sensed.
But, when infertile senses are gone, what’s left? A hollow (corpse)? A teeming emptiness? A plasmatic field? A soul? or no thing.
I prefer no thing. I’m tired of the endless material chase of noun, of structured and reductive sameness. The soul-less naming of the world. The endless descriptions, declensions, and derivations, not to mention re-creations and duplications. Enough is … enough. Gluttony gnawing at the root of satiation. The belly ever larger than the eye. Consume this. It’s gone.
And yet, fully immersed in the stuff of nightmares, no stillness of soul. The body wracked by energies of disorder. Has hypostasis reversed itself, abandoning body’s object?
Have at it, be polite, no grabbing, pushing, or shoving. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate. If you can prove that you’ve read it back to front, I’ll buy you a bottle of Herradura Añejo Tequila*, as long as we can split it!
*this is my hard liquor drink of choice since 1980 when it was hard to find even in the US southwest — cherished bottles imported into Iceland (bought in NYC at NY Liquors on Canal Street, the only place in NYC that carried it!) would last up to six months, like a fine Scottish whiskey, small glasses for sipping — none of that brutish slugging down shots or making margaritas with this fine distillate.
An example of the sliding-scale metaphor I use often in teaching — that whatever dialectically opposed concepts (i.e., networks vs hierarchies) the actuality of the situation is that neither exist in a pure form, but instead exist always in hybrid collision of dynamic evolution — in this case, a net/archy. Another instance (see this):
Smooth space and striated space — nomad space and sedentary space — the space in which the war machine develops and the space instituted by the State apparatus — are not of the same nature. No sooner do we note a simple opposition between the two kinds of space than we must indicate a much more complex difference by virtue of which the successive terms of the oppositions fail to coincide entirely. And no sooner have we done that than we must remind ourselves that the two spaces in fact exist only in mixture: smooth space is constantly being translated, transversed into a striated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth space. In the first case, one organizes even the desert; in the second, the desert gains and grows; and the two can happen simultaneously.
Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. & Massumi, B., 1988. A thousand plateaus : capitalism and schizophrenia, London: Athlone Press. p 475.
I responded to Suzon Fuks’ invitation to join a waterwheel performance this week – Wednesday, 22 August, between 1800 – 2000 MST (time converter here) — the detailed info on the performance as well as the gateway for joining in online is here. As I haven’t had much time to prep and to explore the potentials of the platform, I’m doing a relatively simple improv remix titled “Crossing the Yampa” with video material from Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument, along tributaries of the Yampa and Green Rivers. Looking up, looking down, looking all around, listening, receiving the immersive flows, it’s about water and the life it supports.
Suzon set up waterwheel as a live/online collaborative performance space:
Exploring water — as a topic and metaphor — Waterwheel is an interactive, collaborative platform for sharing media and ideas, performance and presentation.
Waterwheel investigates and celebrates this constant yet volatile global resource, fundamental element, environmental issue, political dilemma, universal theme and symbol of life. It encourages you to explore and discover, share and collaborate, contribute and participate.
Waterwheel calls on everyone — performers and artists, scientists and environmentalists, students and academics, you and me, anyone and anywhere — to test the water, dive in, make a splash and start a wave. It provides a platform and forum for experience and exchange, expression and experimentation.
Waterwheel draws together different people, practices, places, media and modes of expression. There are no borders or boundaries. Waterwheel flows along its natural course.
This equilibrium, however, like the equilibrium of the price system, is a moving equilibrium in that it is constantly being changed by change in the parameters of the system, either through genetic mutation, by producing new species or changing old ones, or through changes in the physical parameters of the system through soil erosion or formation (climate changes, ice ages, etc.). This change in parameters, of course, is evolution. It is a disequilibrium system. Equilibrium, indeed, is unknown in the real world in any strict sense, although temporary and partial equilibria are necessary for our system of perception. If our perceptions were sharp enough we would be incapable of taxonomy. Every second the whole world would look different (in fact, it is). All taxonomy, indeed, is a product of the inadequacies of human perception. How very fortunate these inadequacies are!
Boulding, K.E., 2009. Systems Research and the Hierarchy of World Systems: General Systems in Special Chaos. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 26(4), pp.505–509.
In a world where education is predominantly verbal, highly educated people find it all but impossible to pay serious attention to anything but words and notions. There is always money for, there are always doctorates in, the learned foolery of research into what, for scholars, is the all-important problem: Who influenced whom to say what when? Even in this age of technology the verbal humanities are honored. The non-verbal humanities, the arts of being directly aware of the given facts of our existence, ale almost completely ignored. A catalogue, a bibliography, a definitive edition of a third-rate versier’s ipsissima verba, a stupendous index to end all indexes – any genuinely Alexandrian project is sure of approval and financial support: But when it comes to finding out how you and I, our children and grandchildren, may become more perceptive, more intensely aware of inward and outward reality, more open to the Spirit, less apt, by psychological malpractices, to make ourselves physically ill, and more capable of controlling our own autonomic nervous system – when it comes to any form of non-verbal education more fundamental (and more likely to be of some practical use) than Swedish drill, no really respectable person in any really respectable university or church will do anything about it. Verbalists are suspicious of the non-verbal; rationalists fear the given, non-rational fact; intellectuals feel that “what we perceive by the eye (or in any other way) is foreign to us as such and need not impress us deeply.” more “Huxley’s education”
Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know every object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of ‘Green’? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heat waves can that eye be? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the “beginning was the word.” — Stan Brakhage, “Metaphors on Vision”
The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realize the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of tele-presence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the re-invigoration of the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favor of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style. As current systems of hyper-mobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits – most prominently in the intense debate on global warming – citizens and organizations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced tele-presence technologies.
ElectroSmog and the quest for a sustainable immobility
The ElectroSmog festival for sustainable immobility, staged in March 2010 [1], was both an exploration of this grand promise of tele-presence and a radical attempt to create a new form of public meeting across the globe in real-time. ElectroSmog tried to break with traditional conventions of staging international public festivals and conferences through a set of simple rules: No presenter was allowed to travel across their own regional boundaries to join in any of the public events of the festival, while each event should always be organized in two or more locations at the same time. To enable the traditional functions of a public festival, conversation, encounter, and performance, physical meetings across geographical divides therefore had to be replaced by mediated encounters.
The festival was organized at a moment when internet-based techniques of tele-connection, video-telephony, visual multi-user on-line environments, live streams, and various forms of real-time text interfaces had become available for the general public, virtually around the globe. No longer an object of futurology ElectroSmog tried to establish the new critical uses that could be developed with these every day life technologies, especially the new breeds of real-time technologies. The main question here was if a new form of public assembly could emerge from the new distributed space-time configurations that had been the object of heated debates already for so many years? more “Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog”
[editor: this document was used for a mid-way doctoral assessment at the University of Technology Sydney and no longer reflects the final content of the PhD dissertation as of the April 2012 submission at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The presentation was accompanied by the video that is posted at the end.]
Abstract
The DCA project “The Road” is a psycho-geographic perambulation through a web of personal, social, and universal trajectories which form a new knowledge-base on the cosmos as an entropic system of energy flows. Within this worldview the project explores human presence, encounter, and interaction including a close look at the effects of techno-socially prescribed protocols on those indeterminate flows of energy. As a multi-modal online data-space, the project offers a variety of navigational strategies connecting a rich variety of audio, video, text, and image sources from the candidate’s extensive personal archive of creative material.
Introduction
The armature for this DCA as originally proposed was the concept of the amplifier. An amplifier is essentially a device that takes an incoming flow of energy (signal), and through an influx of power, generates a defined outflow of energy with a greater (directed) intensity. The amplification process needs an independent energy source to increase the signal strength. It also requires a set of protocols that guide the flow of energy from input through output: a coherent signal is a controlled energy flow as defined by applied protocols.
The road, as an expression of a techno-social system (TSS), exemplifies, or, more precisely, is one of these protocol-defined pathways. It was this realization during the last year of research which shifted my focus from the amplifier to the road as both a real and metaphoric concept that opens a rich space for inquiry. The road allows the TSS to express amplified energy flows along its protocol-defined pathway. It is not difficult to conceptually extend the idea of the road as any pathway for the directed and concentrated expression of energy of a TSS. more “From The Regime of Amplification to The Road”
Humans approach the ‘criticality’ of the global situation from a very species-centric view. (of course). If one looks at the flow of the continuance of life throughout its entire trajectory (back to we-know-not-where and we-know-not-when (and we-know-not-how)) — it is quickly noted that all species are transitory to one degree or another. Is there anything special about humans in this regard? So far nothing that humans have succeeded in doing has transcended the flow of life. There is the material/scalar aptitude with which we have accelerated the production of entropy within the limited planetary system. But this, in itself, is insignificant on any transcendent cosmological scale. If this is the only difference, then it might be said that we are only a more efficient life-form in that we cause this entropic acceleration. But even this aspect is relative. Each life-form will fully engage its energy sources and utilize them. To the degree there are readily available sources, life will expand its scale to take advantage of that abundance of energy, rapidly transforming it to waste. A pride of lions will not arrest its hunting of abundant prey unless satiated (and engaged in optimized procreation). Again, nothing new. It seems that the only disturbing characteristic that we sense somewhere in our perspective is the question of scale with our waste-production. Through windows of tele-media we have an (apparently) expanded perspective on the global picture. We see images of ourselves everywhere, engaged in the process of living. But this itself is suspect. A global perspective is a virtual artifice. Our awareness of our problem arises from an artifice of our own creation. What does this say about the problem? The perceived planetary scale is perhaps a distorted and very much reductive artifact embedded in our vision of life. But would the (limited) set of localized sensory perceptions lead to any different conclusions or ways-of-going?
No wonder people crave hyper-Terran (Celestial) visitation — what a perspective shift that would be. That we are not unique in a wider cosmos. That we are merely life. Only then might we be able to get on with it reasonably!
without framing the precise context, a couple quick notes to Rob, regarding the Internet of Things (IOT) and social pro-activity:
sotto voce: I’m not sure these two concepts — decentralized and protocol — can occupy the same actualization (of the techno-social)… protocols arise through a shake-down/feedback/evolution of social relation which ultimately cannot be distributed: but instead they concentrate at certain crux points along social connectors that may not be ‘central’ in that material sense, but that do form a nexus (Latin, ‘a binding together’) which all participating members must drive their expressions through — as a form of fealty to those protocols. Technically, this is not ‘central,’ but because it is formative to the life-trajectories that the participants live out, it is of the same affectation as any (‘centralizing’) social stricture. It’s only a question of degree, how much or how little it alters that individual trajectory to its own purposes. Essentially it is a question of what is done with the shared energy that collects along a shared (protocol-defined) pathway of life-energy. The norm is such that the energy collected from shared social participation cannot (easily) be utilized for the good of the individual. Instead the energy is used for the good of the collective, or, worst case, for a(n elite) subset of the collective. Thus is is statistically rare that there is general satisfaction by all individuals in a collective as to where their collective energy is expressed. (Except when we are talking military victory — where survival-for-procreation is extended by a time.)
and
sotto voce: Unfortunately, however, the language upon which the computational process (devices as well) is constructed upon has that subject/object stasis built in to it at the most fundamental level of the language(protocol) itself. So, to loose oneself from the deterministic relevancy of that system is perhaps not possible because it pervades the underlying ‘logic’ of the system which a ‘new’ form of computational ‘perception’ can’t escape. One might have to code in Sanskrit … in the heart.
In the contemporary framework of human encounter—dominated by instances of hyper-commerce and of tele-mediated presence—life changes to fit the mediation (it does not evolve in the same sense that Darwin’s idea of the process; instead it simply fits the technology), and the character of encounter with(in) life alters for each shift in the techno-social milieu that collectively generates the allowed pathways of exchange.
Freedom is not a question in this situation. Nor is autonomy. Those are absolutes of the abstract: virginal conceptions not directly related to the contingencies of be-ing in and of the world. Absolutes and abstractions do not prepare the Self for the shifting potentialities of collective human encounter which proceed by degree and layered complexity. And indeed, when abstractions govern encounter, the full field of possibility of human encounter is quickly limited to a less-than-finite set of conditions, processes, and outcomes. There arises the alienation of emotive loss in this limitation, but that is another issue to raise elsewhere. Or perhaps this alienation is the reciprocal experience of the (unfulfilled) possibilities of creative encounter.
Or is all this just about losing or gaining procreative (evolutionary) advantage for the species (via technological augmentation), and nothing more?
The fact that the strongest, most beautiful, most intelligent are, overall, given social reward when compared to the least. (Recognizing this, the revolutionary community organizer, Jesus, said (as interpolated by Mathew) “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” to invert the perception of this evolutionary order, and the alternative fact that following his lead will actually alter the order. Was this a miraculous strike at limited potentialities? Or mere agitprop for political expediency?
Finally getting down to some David Bohm texts that I’ve been wanting to absorb for years but never had the time or access. I had a short correspondence with his widow some years back for the purpose of responding to the Dialogue essay and subsequently hosting it on the neoscenes third-party texts area. After Buber, Bohm was the first to show up as a source on my dialogue radar, an influential one at that, when a contemporary concept of dialogue-praxis is examined. Bohm has a powerful and holistic approach, literally, grounded in a worldview based on his interpretation of Quantum, the development of which he was an integral player. I am more than encouraged — inspired would be the correct word — by his approach, rigor, and mapping of a powerful foundational approach to human relation both with the cosmos and with each Other.
Also crucial to his view is the problematic nature of language as it exists (English, specifically), suggesting that the (tyranny) of subject-verb-object be replaced with a structure that emphasizes the verb — emphasizing action over thing (reflecting back to ancient Hebrew as did David Abram in The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World where the written language included only the consonants, and vowels—which necessarily need expiration, a projection of the spirit to say—were introduced by the spoken reader, infusing the word with the life-spirit of breath.
The shifting of English that Bohm suggests illustrates how language informs/forms ones worldview as Benjamin Whorf promoted with his concept of linguistic relativity (which has always seemed obvious to me, an awareness perhaps brought about through the process of photographic abstraction of the world).
Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Bohm, David, Routledge, London, 2002
The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world. — Wilhelm von Humboldt
Then the question of how to deal with all these books at once? Where to read them, how to take notes, how much to read in any one at a time, and such. Reading in the evening before sleeping isn’t very good, although restful. Mid-afternoon is optimal, but carving out several hours from the daily to-do grind makes that difficult. Having a space in the CMAI office is very helpful now, as there are more comfortable chairs. The collective grad offices are too noisy and busy. Dislocating to Bronte or a cafe elsewhere is possible, but not time-effective if only for reading. Ach!, the questions of methodology …
Film serves to train human beings in the practice of those apperceptions and reactions required by the frequentation of an apparatus whose role in their daily life ever increases. To make this whole enormous technological apparatus of our time into the object of human interiorization and appropriation [innervation] — that is the historic task in whose service film has its true meaning. — Walter Benjamin
Then is there any reason to doubt a connection between the declining power and influence of the (technocratic mediocracy of the) United States and the implementation of the Internet as-it-is today? Is there any connection between the tendencies of its population to spend their (limited) life-time in tele-communication (and tele-consumption!) and the demise of civil society? People seemingly now avoid confronting the (unknown) Other and rather cluster as mirrored-Selves, with a cumulative effect of breakdown of a (diverse) cultural fabric into a checker-board of self-interest groupings which spend time defending the borders of their squares from the surrounding Evil unknown.
this conclusion proposed in the sense that if film can have that profundity of affectation on human nervous systems (the primary interface with the world-as-mediated-by-body; or the primary EM antenna-structures), then what of all the wide press of technological development seeping into all parts and orifices of perception and reaction?
exploring modalities of communication. of connection, of be-ing. Kittler shows up on the radar immediately (hmmm, recalling that extremely uncomfortable evening with him in that bar in Linz before the Intertwinedness happening. he needed the table to circulate around him. and it did because of the language (protocol) gap. I was not fluent in German enough to access the discussion that inevitably circulated, hovered, around him. strange situation. instead I talked with his assistant (and translator whose name I have now forgotten), a young American who came to worship Kittler in Berlin for a time. I left early as I had to catch a train to Copenhagen early the next morning.)
how to bind energy in to the text [as the particular creative output]. to be released in TIME. to the proper receiver.
that from an earlier travelogue entry. it clearly has been on mind for a long time. actually the transition from print-making to performance/happening was a mapping of that need. finding that the silver print was just too rigid a platform when compared to presence. although the print is, as with anything, in retrospect, a resonance of presence and be-ing as is any trace left in the wake of life. more “to be mindful of modalities”
spend the afternoon at a meeting with a group of about 15 enthusiastic Mizzou students who are interested in fundamental issues around sustainability and social activism. the meeting (Open Sustainability Network Mid-Missouri, under the title Tools to Thrive. hosted by Richard Schulte, one of the founders of the Mid-Missouri group (which is connected to the umbrella Open Sustainability Network). OSN-MM is also the initiator of the Columbia Missouri Exchange Circle. Lonny Grafman, the featured presenter, is a lecturer at Humboldt State University and is the founder of Appropedia Foundation, the self-proclaimed sustainability wiki which provides a public platform for information on sustainable community practices along with pertinent knowledge-sets for implementation. Lonny is also the Executive Editor of International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering (IJSLE). He introduced some of his work in the form of a presentation Democracy Unlimited Humboldt County Rainwater: A Case Study in Open Source Community Action for Sustainability which explored community activism in deployment of sustainable (in this case, domestic rainwater gathering) systems. words: creation of human networks … the search for a deliverable … starts with a sonic ambient exploration a rainstorm … examples of rainwater sequestering … Bechtel in Bolivia … anthropocentric impurities … a lesson in rainwater catchments: free … local infrastructures generate independence / autonomy. Too many details at first. without the principles of appropriate technology use — public perception, policy situation, know-how, resources, initiative, currency in Humboldt … hemp paper, soy inks … Temporary Autonomous Zone break-out groups: creation and organization of more and better public art; bike-powered something; CSPAN (Columbia Sustainability Policy Action Network); local economy (in general); moving from thought to action; facilitating dialogue; sustainable creative activism; expanding the sustainability community; empathy and interconnectedness; rooftop gardens where possible on campus; community networking club celebrations, gardening; organizing / participating in one implementation workshop for a physically appropriate technology setup; less plastic use, healthy local food, teaching sustainability to children … sorry no more detailed notes, I had to leave right after the break-out sessions to meet Nick and Deb to look at houses. I cycle across downtown from campus to the Walgreens where I lock the bike and go in to buy a snack. when I come out I wander across the parking lot looking for Deb’s car. a chubby white woman gets out of a sedan and asks me if I need a ride. she says she normally doesn’t do that, but I looked like I wasn’t a killer and that she’d be happy to help me out. I say no, no thanks, I’m just waiting for friends to pick me up. mid-western courtesy? I’m wearing a black leather biker’s jacket, black jeans, black half-gloves and a baseball cap from Germany, and dark brown sunglasses. who’s she kidding? she must have been one of those mild-mannered mid-western serial killers. just then Deb pulls up. saved! Nick stayed with the kids, so we drive into the countryside to some small towns looking at houses. the area is really depressed, many empty storefronts on Main Street. and this area is relatively affluent compared to much of the rest of the state. it would be very interesting to travel through these areas and document what is happening. sustainability? indeed. things are not sustained here. help is needed.
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”
what about it. is it recall, pure recall? or is it synthesis. or a combination of the two, or something completely elsewise, like a state of head that comes during a seizure, magnetic vortices swirling around picking spun and un-blocked beta adrenergic receptors in heart-felt relaxation and then the words all spill out. perfect recall? imperfect recall? replicating dialogue, reconstructing conversation, impression, apprehension, perception. stretch, scratch. back to the less descriptive and to the more surficial of textual generation. better yet, the visual. easier to cope with. but without any possibility of breaking out into a pluralistic space where threads of the Other are artfully woven into the text(ile) of word here. so that goes. the accession to expression in the midst of compression of social division to sparking violence. only the sounds that are in the head are worth reflecting. where the head gets filled in the movement of day-to-day through the systemic participation, this followed by a core dump of the consequent alteration of neural system in reaction? or is this reactionary writing? a real-time tap into the momentary flow of thought cannot, in fact, happen. unless fingers can transcribe this floating, channeling of sensation in-to-out. it happens. rarely if ever for most, sustained for a select few who are configured for this state of flow. hmmm.
Jodi sends an announcement about one of her curatorial efforts, Sound Constructions, in collaboration with Program: Initiative for Art and Architectural Collaborations. it’ll be good to see this crew all together!
Sound surrounds us, moves through us and affects our perception and experience to place and space in more ways than we usually imagine. The sound of knowledge being produced in scientific labs, the sound created by the ears themselves, the vibrations of the city playing a new kind of music, wavelengths of the wall coming from the front line in Sarajevo, the secret voice of bridges transmitted across the globe, the sound of radio waves in the ether, sound as intervention back into the street, and creating an imaginary city with sound, all come together in a fascinating weekend forum.
head hanging, I have the distinct mis-pleasure of missing my godson’s Bar Mitzvah this coming weekend. hmmmm. lack of disposable income to increase carbon foot-print-stamp and head East. that’ll come shortly perhaps. but in the meanwhile, Andrea (Simon’s mum) shares her script for the evening (mind you, the photo above post-dates the beginning of this narrative a couple years — around the Buttinsky-Hoppy-Top & Armpit Dancing Era), that’s dad, Bill with big bro Zander along with Simon in his mother’s arms, lil’ sis Maxie is still in the oven):
Simon Arthur gracefully slid into the world on May 2, 1994. He had a powerful set of lungs, but he didn’t get much chance to talk those first few years. Zander was his big brother, and rarely missed an opportunity to speak on Simon’s behalf. Simon had to learn other ways to capture an audience. Silent, sly, comical ways. He innately understood the power of nudity to gain the spotlight, and used it regularly. It was the rare gathering in our house, or anyone elses house for that matter, that Simon did not make the scene if not fully undressed, then in his tiny little briefs. Whether it was his stunningly fast Ninja moves — which often had the unintended result of landing him on his own back — or his oddly endearing Armpit dance, Simon relished entertaining the crowd his way. more “Simon’s Bar Mitzvah”
walking down Bedford Street I meet the lady with the lime green brolly heel-toeing it briskly to the wine shop, kitty-cat in a tote bag, and stories about winning over the boys in the community garden. dinner with Amanda and Stephanie, at Amanda’s place in Brooklyn. along with Mr. Tiger, Amanda’s new cat who seemed easy-going and sociable despite battle scars from street life in Brooklyn.
earlier I was able to get together with Eric, a sharedj activist among his many other talents. at a cave-like cafe in Brooklyn he showed me some of his keyworx-based work which immediately brought to mind Stan Brakhage’s aesthetic which could easily be described as the precursor to much vj work in the present time (including my own). although my contact with Brakhage was, on a film-production level, limited, the discussions, and more importantly the simple exposure to his vision through screenings of his and other’s work was moving and formative to the inner eye. he had his little cubby-hole office next to and half the size of mine when I was a grad student, so we got to know each other better through informal chats — life is short art is long…
Imagine an eye un-ruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, and eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of ‘Green’? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heat waves can that eye be? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the ‘beginning was the word.’ — Stan Brakhage
anyway, back to Eric’s output — he also collaborates as a tenor and lutenist on an entirely different plane in Asteria, a Medieval/Renaissance music duo. he passed on a copy of Soyes Loyal, their latest album featuring Burgundian chansons of courting and love from the 14th century. Eric’s divergent interests and skills are incongruous on the surface but stand as a strong example of how personal energy transmission does not have to be closely tied to form but rather to the efficiency with which one finds the projection of such energy through a chosen material mediation. Eric is attentive, concentrated, skilled, and definitely efficient transforming his energy into a variety of forms of inspiration.
post-op. twelve bleary and medicated hours later. I am splayed open for 6 hours of spinal surgery — anterior L3 corpectomy combined with a L2-L4 fusion in titanium — from noon to 6 pm with a team of doctors lead by Dr. Papadopoulos. he tells Janet that the surgery went perfectly. I have no coherent memories of the ensuing 3 days when on heavy morphine IV. with the self-delivering clicker that Janet says I am clicking on all the time.
waking moments bring the perception of the room, nurses coming and going checking on my body’s status, the IV machine sounding like a few children shuffling down a long corridor and back, forever, shoes scraping on an institutional tile floor. why don’t they stop them going back and forth so I can sleep?
when eyes close, like a junkies eyes grafted onto my own, as lids drop, another reality rolls into place. immediate, present, and dynamic. sometimes I find myself reaching out to touch the objectification of vision. knowing it’s not there, except a sliver of doubt, maybe it is. scenes as real as any reality, urban, details everywhere, even where the eye is not focused, textures impossible to render except in real time. changing, evolving, and the self, wraith-like moving through it all, soaking in the experience.
A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor’s note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 that set life on another trajectory.]
1.0 Statement of Problem
1.1 Introductory note
Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. more “The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks”
the last night on the island. darkness drifting after some late afternoon storms, with hail even. time. to go. gathering things into the usual one suitcase, one travel bag, one day-pack. realizing that I might never be back here, because other things might happen. anything can happen, anytime. on the phone around Scandinavia (taking maximum advantage of the telecom possibilities). so many items to consider, with workshops popping up in Norway, Lithuania, Denmark, and Iceland during just a short period in the fall. keeps the blood moving and the mind alert. always that way. coming three things at once.
with the three-month residency behind now, reflections? nope. life passing, life passing, life passing. concern about this makes for time burnt without even the rising smoke of holy incense. only floating in the drift of human development. is the historicity of change merely the gained perspective of time spent in this incarnation? the perception of the increasingly predictable in genesis, but largely chaotic in application, range of human interventions that destroy life rather than nurture it? and the Buddhist who is not attached to all of it.
okay, giving up for now. closing connections, unplugging cables, powering down, packing the last bits and pieces.
winter storm looms, hyped by the weather channel and other means of mediation. forgot to sniff the air to see what’s coming. or so.
following the kitchen remodel story that Ellen relates, with a cross-cultural perception gap. thinking that I could do that kind of work. wood-working, after the process of gathering my grandfather’s tools together in his single massive redwood toolbox — my namesake, Charles B., who, for some time in his life, built houses for a living — all the work done without electric power. so, the toolbox full of an array of devices for creating all the forms of wood one would need to construct a house in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. how to do that now. and how time and care is a constitutive mode to arrive at energized wooden objects.
what I hope will be the last visit to Iceland for a long time. bone-tired of the movement to get here. feel like being grounded. allowing the electricity of life pass through the body and on into the earth. grounded. in all its suggested meanings. flighty. with the wind blowing outside. and non-sense of the isolation of the interior. the protected sensual field of action. band-limited, spectrally-defined cut and pass. and all that. filtration. that the process of being tends in the direction of shutting down than opening up. but that is my own perception. realizing that possibly some others tend to open-ness as a base condition. open to life and living. what a concept. I have to fight to achieve that state of being. but maybe it is the fight that stands in the way.
neoscene occupation project one into the 13th hour so far. more than half done. here for the duration or more. cut. warm bed, lying down, only six more days here in Lapland. and now what? 14.5 hours and counting. tiger skins and prepping the dreams of another age, my son is in Manhattan, missing his two front teeth. 18 hours and crawling. Toni comes by with a couple net-compatriots from Oulu. tuned in. the Amurikans don’t make it. they are fattened and shopping, unconcerned by international events microscopic and macroscopic. whether they are linked to being. or they just limp along with. whatever happens to mirror the face of the beast. catch its eye. and bring some sense to the senselessness. Babylon, huh? what’s that? heading to new states or not. being and not being. chanting. being chanted upon. shaman calls, body recalls. body count, banding together. suit up and bring it all down. good morning, are you there? childish dreams, expectations. cut. a new person to face. another body to quit. form from. fanning flames, army-gettin-on, zat what it’s called? end o’time? beginning of other dreams in the bardo of becoming. I greet these dreams like I greet the morning. some days it is with the flat recovery of self forming nothing of the clay of body that lies dormant on the bed. other times it slides, slides, slides, a sharp-edged wedge of chromium thin at the apex, so thin that there is no perception of being pried from the rock of sleep, a barnacle in the tidal zone of being, being washed by the returning ether of wakefulness and the encroaching sea of dreams, body-in-repose.
zones away from the southwest. meters lower, here on fogbound ocean/land interfaces. so it goes. where blue-shifted Light measures accurate edges and shapes of presence. from massive and broad infrared pressure at high-noon, head flattening, surrounded by prickly pear cactus spine wilderness desiccating skin and eyes — to this place. flights. in between. leaving something behind and arriving somewhere. swimming this morning as fog breaks, the altitude allowing me to do a quick 1000 meters in the luxury of the 50-meter pool, then a meeting at the Kjarval City Art Museum with Thorbjörg about the upcoming ARCUNET meeting in Helsinki that I will attend as an adviser to the Museum. Loki and I play frisbee by the ocean in the afternoon. trying not to realize that I walk away from him again, and trying not to let jealousy affect my perceptions and actions relating to his mother. we walk down the beach for a ways and practice skipping rocks. then back to the house for dinner and packing. a short visit to Valgerdur’s place to see her and Haukur to hear about his adventures of the past year in Japan. Niels is away on a guiding job. Kaisu, who is visiting Iceland from Finland after a five year absence for an art workshop, is there also.
Forty-degree temperature swings signal the approach of winter. sun draws into a southern zenith. recall a phrase that meant so much — traverse no zenith — imperative demand, plea from a heart moving through bands of circumpolar cloud, Light of Being. on the phone caught by the unexpected, radio clipping sounds cut into aural continuity. two instances of deja vu fire into the continuity of recent cyclic time. the screaming train, braking downhill across the street. hearing, I race downstairs grab the video camera and begin filming. leaning against the frame of the front door, one foot propping open the screen, seeing the contents of the viewfinder, I am there in dream again. before, like during the Self-to-Self event way back in 1990 immediately prior to flying to Iceland, staying at Bill and Andrea’s place in Layton, Peters Valley. that Knowing within the flow of sensory information. reeling screeching of steel wheels pulsing to a halt over many minutes. and the visual construction of things, impression on eye. being pushed into the race of perception. and the thoughts strung out in a progression of order, like it was before, like it was before. I was here now. I am here then. and the coming-to-be yet a pure formation of new-ness in pre-dreams that are no longer real but are fragments of movement movement movement. somehow things have changed. back is stable, not hurting all day, for the first time in months. this was the year of back-ness, backwardness, spinal deficiency, upright challenged, anti-bipedalian. crawling, lying on the back, succumbing totally to gravity, being absorbed by the floor-ness, being at the bottom, close to the earth or pressed to lower matter. any change in this is a revelation, somewhere near Patmos, and the end Times not too far off. formed conversations are call and response. pressing idea out, energy, in the form of Words. Light. Words. Light. Words. saying that ignites, seeing the Other come back from the hearing in another state, hearing difference, and praying that the hearing is not distorted by the filters of learned being. WHERE IS MY VOICE? hidden behind the anti-truth of language, squirming under the weight of separate and solitary understandings. experiences unfold and leave a taste in mind that is akin to a dry polluted wind, blowing across steppes of post-industrial carparks. stained ground, offal of automobiles and material sinners. case closed. nothing reported today. late anyway, and over and out. from a western front.
Indolent days slip into thunderstorms. August is more wet than usual, I am told. I recall the browns of August in years past, maybe this is true. Weather is such a relative thing, though, with people’s perceptions. I seem to have developed some allergies since I have returned to the Front Range, though, some say the pollen and mold counts are especially high for this time of year because of the excessive moisture. I think my lungs have been spoiled by the (relatively) pristine air of Scandinavia. One never knows: I have the suspicion that there are unknown factors that are beginning to work on people’s bodies, physical incarnations, in these late days. Linda has all kinds of Chinese and homeopathic concoctions that I ply myself with all day and evening, but none of them really get to this irritation of the throat, a tickling that keeps me coughing at a steady pace most of the time. Incredibly irritating it is. It ruined my sleep last night, something I can’t afford tonight as I have a big day tomorrow and the next two days after that … Gees. Erica Doss invites me to teach another class at CU this fall, thankfully, a class in Critical Thinking on Art and Society in addition to the Digital Imaging class for Jim. And, actually this afternoon I get a call from Susan at Metro State about teaching an Advanced Computer Graphics class. Doubt I will take that one. I have to think forward to when Loki will be here with me, and I don’t want to get spread thin, besides there are plenty of other projects that need to get done this fall. Plus people to visit with, and infrastructure to lay down for the possibility of returning here next fall. Hmmmm. Seems VERY possible, but, is it the right path?
Juggling mental images, virtual being-ness, weather impressions, family, others, water, body, rain. I saw a coyote loping along the road this morning on the way over to Jim and Janet’s for breakfast. Angelique made biscuits and gravy. Jim was out waiting for a javelina to show up at a friends house — I guess you could call it vermit huntin’ — inside the town limits, and a big javelina it was rumored to be.
The Stupid Bowel, as I named it, was today. I was pleased that during that spectacle of spectacles, the internet was FAST! Like, Blazing! Wish it was always that way … Alexandra and I finally touched base with an IRC test this evening for something over an hour. I am having difficulty putting some kind of deconstructive take on this whole eight dialogues project. It is carrying energy, of that I am certain. The energy is real time, but the effect of the text mediation, the time lapse, the technical interface, and the perception/manifestation of physical presence. I have been having trouble typing all day, too, inverting letter order. Don’t understand that. I wouldn’t mind a better keyboard and working situation here at the house. I work standing up for my back and then my feet and legs just go crazy. I have never been so conscious of my body and its limits as I have these past weeks here in Arizona.
Loki is up early because he is sleeping on the bed in the kitchen and there are only Light curtains on the windows. I have something of a rare hangover (timburmann, I think, in Icelandic, for wood-head). Shortly after breakfast we head down to the swimming pool with Rebecca Rún, Loki’s island playmate who lives next door. The pool doesn’t open until an hour later because the electricity is off somewhere. Friends Hoffí and Kristín arrive on the 1330 ferry, so MB goes to meet them. I stay swimming with the kids. Late in the evening, around midnight, after a big dinner of leg-of-lamb I head to the north end of the island on a too-small borrowed mountain bike that I know will give me sore thighs tomorrow. There is a dirt road all the way to the Light house that stands on the highest point of the island about two-thirds of the way north.
The north half of the island is private property, but MB called earlier in the day and got permission for me to ride to the end.
In general, visitors are discouraged, mainly to protect the vast number of breeding birds. The island has the largest single breeding population of arctic terns in Europe. These are incredibly fascinating and beautiful birds. I’m not an ornithologist or avian freak, but I can watch the terns for hours. It is unbelievable that they fly all the way from South African and Antarctic waters or so, each spring — although, watching them, you understand immediately that they represent a rare peak of efficiency and grace-in-motion. The entire ride I am accompanied by terns and other birds who swirl up from the heather and grass to run relay with me for one reason or another, all making their own characteristic sounds. I was wishing I had brought fresh batteries for my tape deck … The sounds are varied and mostly piercing, and in the case of the tern, they can actually presage a physical attack from the birds, whose sharply tapered beaks are potent weapons. Other birds on the island are Oystercatchers, Whimbrels, Curlews, Snipes (yes there is such a thing!), Woodcocks, Ptarmigans, Godwits, and Skuas. Birds comprise the vast majority of living things in Iceland, I both ignore them and concentrate on them. Although I don’t startle any Eiders, there are plenty of them on the island as well — usually seen segregated in the coastal waters — the brown females with a passel of chicks, and the black and white males swimming in a group. I recall once, out hiking on the east side of the island, I saw one of the score or so known White-Tailed eagles in the country doing some serious aerial acrobatics as it was being attacked by a group of terns.
I was last at the north end of the island four years ago, in the very spot with Nick, Chris, Debra, Chris, Stefan, and MB, who was, at that time, almost eight months pregnant with Loki.
On that night it was rather clear, or at least we got to see the sun make its transit, grazing the surface of the ocean direct to the north of us. Tonight, there is a gray pall hanging over the ocean, actually touching it just a few kilometers off shore, so the sun is not seen, except indirectly in the constant shifting of the Light omnipresent. I stay at the end of the island for a couple hours, enjoying the solitude, knowing this will be as far as I get to isolation in the coming months. The Solstice has taken on special psychic meaning for me since I moved to Iceland, and the Summer Solstice is actually a heavy time in that it is the moment when the days begin to contract until they vanish into the blue-blackness of the Arctic winter which is a complete immersion. Total immersion in a substance that is anti-Light, a Light that pulls one deeply into the earth from the other hemisphere, the one that is facing the Light … Somehow, although the landscape here is apparently vast and constantly receding from the eye, there is another aspect to it, that of closeness. When the wind dies down, and often wind still is characteristic of the midsummer sunsets, the surrounding space contracts until it appears as a room, a geometrically bounded space converging on the eye. It is knowable in a Cartesian way, within the span of the body. This is exactly what happens where I am restlessly pacing. The edge of the cliff 200 feet down to the ocean appears as clear as the corner of a room. The grassy hummock behind me is etched with a clarity that makes it sensually two dimensional. The sky is just … there. Waterfalls, where streams fall down the cliffs that line the outer few kilometers of the fjord, can be heard clearly though they are at least 6 kilometers away. They are … there. Distance is relative or just doesn’t seem to factor in perception.
