Individuals who rely on someone else’s cloud to store precious, irreplaceable digital artefacts [sic] such as kids photos and videos, need to be aware of their backup and restore position in case their cloud service provider disappears. This runs counter to the perception that the cloud might be secure, and one where the cloud provider, for the most part, is taking care of the complex magic behind the scenes to keep your digital assets safe and sound. — Cloud Price Wars
back to presence
Between instances of ‘seeing’ someone, it is easy to believe that perhaps we have no ‘contact’ or influence, or other expression of presence on that Other. But this seems not at all true, and is only a perverse influence of a close-to-pure material culture. In the moments, hours, days between the face-to face encounter, I am, first off, already at the effect of our prior encounter. This has changed me, fundamentally. I am elsewise already, as I depart from your immediate presence. It’s not merely a question of persistence of this change: it is far more profound than merely the ‘propagation’ of something with in my Self, being elsewise means that I am change(d). As I draw away, the change persists in the now-transformed Self. This new Self moves along, it is engaging the flow of life in a way that is different than if it had not encountered the Other: you are there. Maybe this is only another framing of memory, but what, indeed, is memory but the persistence of the effects of encounter: an effect of the change that comes from open encounter. Still seems that this could simply be labeled as ‘presence’ as it is a persistent effect of presence, and that (Cartesian) proximity is irrelevant.
This whole scenario reminds of the multi-verse theory of reality, but one question would definitely be, what is the granularity of the splitting off of a new universe? How ‘often’ would it occur — it would have to be an any juncture of change, or so… Which would seem to be asymptotically close to infinite, which I suppose is what string theory suggests, etc., etc.
more on control and autonomy
A techno-social system is predicated and constructed on a system of control exerted on the flows of energy that are antithetical to its ordered existence or that simply exist ‘out there.’ Within a techno-social system, at all scales, levels, and between all actors, there exists a constant, dynamic re-balancing of these energies (energy flows). With an input of external energy as the source, the overall techno-social system will exert varying levels of control over different spatio-temporal regions. Control is essentially the existence of prescribed pathways of flow which insure the desired persistence of stasis in a sea of chaotic flows. The degree that a techno-social system can proscribe un-controlled pathways is the degree of coherence that techno-social system will have. more “more on control and autonomy”
work, labor, action
Arendt‘s tripartite approach to the sociopolitical — Work, Labor, Action — in “The Human Condition” suggests the expenditure or the flow of energy. All three are intertwined within the do-ing, the be-ing of life, and in the sense that they are all embodied expressions of life-energy, they are equal, divided only by the particularities of the pathways of expression of those energies. She begins, I believe correctly, with viva activa as her source: the active, activated life. However, she does not explicitly posit a connection between viva activa and the source of the possibility for an active lif, that is: ones life-energy (sourced in the energized thermodynamic flows of life itself). These impulses towards the social structures of collective life must have a source, an activated well-spring that drives the cumulative social (and life) dynamic. The question of the source is perhaps more important than the ultimate expression of the source.
more “work, labor, action”
on the road again
Heading out on a three-month road-trip. Tailwind across the reservation at least part of the time. Embarkation for slickrock and slot canyons, salt pans, playa, and rotated fault-blocks. Heavy tailwind expected, along with winter weather for the rest of the week across the entire west. Hope to appear, unscathed, at the other end in Wendover.
The road fills the head with eye-blink disorientation. Transient fragments of thoughts thrum along in no particular order, no rhythm, as unconnected as any sequence of fated events: reflecting fated events in minds-eyes. Too much seen outside the window, beyond the amorphous silica barrier. And too much not sensible because of that attenuated presence versus the full immersion. (Virtual) movement. Looking for roadside memorials this time. Something to lock the thoughts into the reality of mortal coils. Find a few. Stopping for them is always a bit tricky, especially with a 65- or 75-mph speed limit. I drive a bit slow with this old vehicle of mine, and slower still so that once I spy a cross of some sort, I can safely stop on the shoulder. To die on the same stretch of road somehow would not be auspicious; under the wide silent sky and red cliffs, stars, with the smell of spring sage in the air. Wind passing through shredded plastic bags caught on the barbed-wire fence. Someone told me those bags are called witches panties. A small golden bell tinkles vacantly, tied to a wreath of plastic flowers shivering in the wind.
What is the difference between that containable in the reduced tracing of recorded, reproduced, recreated image or sound and that which resists the reductive process with an impassive tenacity, no, a merely passive and eternal persistence. The difference lies in what the observer brings to the reductive process and what the hearer, viewer brings when consuming the reduced trace. It has little if anything to the originary energy of the thing, das Ding, das Ganze, itself. The emanations affect the reduction, there is a direct correlation, but in the technique, the process of reduction is deeply tied to the techno-social. No way to decouple that. (Or is there?)
All the way from telling stories to making movies to painting canvases to building houses.
What is the advantage of shunting the energy of a situation through more and more of the techno-social domain? Or does it matter at all? Compare (telling) stories in person about an experience (sono-linguistic reductions) with posting digital photographs online (visible radiation reductions). In principle a reduction is a reduction is a reduction. And when compared the the situated phenomena itself, any and all reductions are not the thing itself.
The dam at Lake Powell, as with the Hoover, a high-security zone, protected by hired guns. No bags allowed in the visitors center. Celebrations of all that the techno-social can bring to the merely social, along with a big-screen overview of the lake at 59-percent-capacity with a fat white bathtub ring contrasting the red rock cliffs. German tourists debate the advantages of the Best Western versus the Quality Inn motels.
empathy (smoke and mirrors)
John Vallee, 54, lives near the trestle that spans the Crane Creek and was watching TV when he heard a loud screech. He went outside and first thought he saw a blanket tangled under a rail car. Then he realized it was a person.
“It’s going to be hard for me to get to sleep,” Mr. Vallee told Florida Today. “I can’t get it out of my mind.” — AP
The energized impression and apprehension of be-ing leaves us with resonant formations in embodied memory. And it is resonance that best circumscribes (models) the phenomena of the propagation of empathy from the Other to the Self. Although there is no hard evidence in humans, the concept of mirror neurons would seem to support the idea of resonance. Caught a lecture at UM with Deb on “Empathy in Normal Adult Development and Neurological Disease” with Bob Levenson from UCB which got me thinking of the actual mechanism that allows for the transmission of the energies of expression across Cartesian space from the Self to the Other. The obvious model would be the transmission of band-limited radiative (visual, auditory, touch, etc) energy which then is apprehended by the neural system, a system which is sensitive to ‘matched’ or similar experiences that have already impinged and impressed themselves on the body system. This impression process changes the body system from one energy configuration to another. And any life system will have fundamental resonant pathways — these would be necessary determinants of basic learned experience — whatever the particular and precise mechanism is (mirror neurons being perhaps a primary model), the idea of resonance seems to be key. Resonance would depend on some accounting of sameness and difference as per prior embodied experience and the persistence of impressions (which themselves are configurations of energized neuronal structures: memory) among other factors. There would have to be a means for rapid energy pattern-matching across a huge volume of semi-fixed memory structures in the brain — it would be impossible to check all possible prior impressions with all live incoming impressions, so there would have to be some kind of disgressionary or limiting function to the process in the form of step or directional filters…
I can’t get you out of my mind…
Sydney Non-Objective Gallery exhibition
[ed: An excerpt of neoscenes::drift was recently included in the Sydney Non-Objective Catalogue and CD 2005-2010, SNO Gallery, Sydney, AU, 2010 (gallery catalog and audio CD) ISBN 978-0-9805877-3-9, Mar 2010]
reflections on neoscenes :: drift
lost in a maelstrom of sonic simulations and stimulations, re-collected, re-presented, via various creato-destructive algorithmic methodologies, drift moves through many post-cartesian spaces and through several parallel universes. depending on your frame of reference you may follow a similar path. or you may not. drift demands relativity and provides quantum realism.
(01:00:00, stereo audio, 115 mb)
blurb for SNO gallery exhibition web site, November 2009, NSW, Australia:
drift arises from an ordered archive of ambient phonographic fragments recorded over the past twenty years or so. From this archive improvisational works are assembled: indeterminate and reductive modulations that critically sample the flow of embodied be-ing. Known objects and discrete events populate our world only because we are social animals who have learned the dominant protocols of the techno-social system that we inhabit. This condition is especially onerous with the protocols circumscribing the failed (object-oriented) materialist worldview. drift consciously moves algorithmically with-in and with-out of recognizable protocols, acknowledging that without these memory-impressed protocols, all immediate experience becomes an incomprehensible flow. However, the cosmos we participate in, and indeed, are part of, is composed of these flows and comprehension is an illusion. What we know is only the temporal persistence of patterns in our embodied consciousness which resonate with an attenuated selection of those flows. drift simulates the full signal width of the flows, recognizable or not, and simply transits the field which is the present.
what is
… what is is movement. Actually what tends to make it difficult for us to work in terms of this notion is that we usually think of movement in the traditional way as an active relationship of what is and what is not. — David Bohm
This gets to a core condition — all is movement: movement/motion is creative (including our consciousness). It also suggests that a redirection of that movement is not really possible, as redirection itself as a concept is simply the mapping relative to a Cartesian or other reductive framework. That is, unless the redirection is thought of as a (the) outcome of processional (negentropic) attenuation of flows caused by life. Which suggests that life itself is essentially creative, an obvious linguistic tautology. But life, as a general phenomena, affects a wide range of arbitrarily specified flows (flows that can be viewed in a traditionally categorized way as being different). By this I mean that in addition to the base (chemical) energy conversion mechanisms that govern most life forms there are a vast, subtle, and complex array of expressions of these processes which biochemists have been slowly teasing out, but never reaching a finality on at all. Whatever the case, the flows can be said to follow more or less explicit pathways (although our traditional view of these pathways is largely informed by mechanistic understanding and reductive framing. It is also such that it is our implicate consciousness, our full and immediate apprehension of the phenomena that we sense, is part of that originary what is.
Memory is the prime example of the persistence of a pathway of flow. It is precisely the persistence that allows us to move through the world without each successive moment being a surprising cacophony of unpredicted and unrecognizable sensory impressions. While at the same time, memory is itself, as an element of consciousness, implicate to what is being circumscribed.
The process of thought is not, however, merely a representation of the manifest world; rather it makes an important contribution to how we experience this world, for, as we have already pointed out earlier, this experience is a fusion of sensory information with the replay of some of the content of memory (which latter contains thought built into its very form and order). — David Bohm
a small discovery
finding some interesting material from Leslie White, an anthropologist who wrote on cultural evolution and based his views on the idea that cultural systems are ultimately technological systems and that these systems can be ranked by their level of energy use and their capacity to access and utilize adequate energy resources. he had a troubled later life between his wife of 30 years dying and his slide into alcoholism. hmmmm
and then Fred Cottrell, a sociologist writing in his book Energy and Society (1955) about a social systems need for a net energy return. not sure if I can find a copy of this in the Australia uni library system, but hope to.
The evidence for Lotka’s position is not yet sufficient to make it clear that it should be formulated into a law. But the tendency it expresses … fits other evidence that ability to control energy conversion is one factor involved in the persistence of patterns that require energy for their replication. Certainly the patterns of observable human behavior fall into that category. Man cannot escape thermodynamics … his effectiveness in controlling energy conversion so that is serves his needs and satisfies his values is one measure of his probable survival in a habitat. — W. Fred Cottrell
winter storm
anonymous online life. Plaxo. another online social networking site that makes people look (and feel!) like this… empowered, eh?
winter storm comes, one of those Pacific storms rolling from the west, from California, tracing little rain shadows across the desert. the first wave comes with thunder and dense, dark clouds, air temperature dropping 10 degrees (C). that passes to the east, blackening sky, followed by a double rainbow that plants itself into the scraped earth of the developments on the next range of hills. Granite Mountain is wreathed in scudding shreds of vapor. I can recall the sky four thousand feet lower in the low desert when these storms roll through. but most of all the complete saturation of the air with that wetted-earth smell. everything eight weeks dry. in late summer early fall sunshine.
got overwhelmed by the flood of responses from the class of 1976 regarding the images I finished uploading. maybe people are more nostalgic as times pass. it’s been interesting to hear from folks, though, after all this time. but still nothing solid to comprehend about why memory is so powerful. persistence of recognizing flows. evolutionary, yes. recalling what is dangerous, what is nutritious. but externalized memory, images. as the image-maker, eye hidden behind layers of amorphous silica distortion. seeing. (did I miss high school behind this glass?). am I replaying what was missed?
anyway, a selection of responses, so it goes.
Hi John, I can’t believe you put this all together after all this time. Great job on the photos. What a fabulous collection. It was great fun looking at them. It really took me back. Where do you live now? I still live in Maryland with my husband and son. Our daughter is a senior in college majoring in Biology. I would love to hear from you. Thanks again. God Bless. — Sharon Hill (Warnick)
Hi John, Thanks for the photos. My wife and I always hang out with her friends from high school, here in Los Angeles, and when I hear about how people still hang out with high school friends in Gaithersburg, I always wonder what it would be like to live there and see you all too. My mom and dad still live in the house we lived in when these pictures were taken, but they’re talking about moving now. Getting too old to keep up the house. When they go, my physical connection to Gaithersburg will finally be severed. It’s pictures like yours that keep it all alive for me. Thanks! — Chip Bolcik
john, I really enjoyed the pictures. I am not sure who found my email address, but I was grateful. Think of you often as I have been commuting through Clarksburg, which has gone through changes, as I am sure you have heard. Don’t know if you remember me or not, but wanted to say thanks for the photos. — Debbie Hokanson (Lorenz)
Hi John, Just wanted to thank you for all your hard work getting the photos from high school on your web site. I loved you website and glad you were able to continue with Photography. I’m sure that was time consuming, but certainly worth it. I think That 70’s Show should look at it so they could be more authentic. Hope you make the next reunion. Take care — Sharon Niemann (Hartley)
Absolutely fabulous photos! Had a great time reminiscing. Thanks for sharing! — Karen Harvey (Warnick)
Fantastic job, John! What a fun memory trip for a sunny southwest Florida afternoon. — Susi Martinsen (Sue Merkling)
Dear John… wwwwwwwwwwwooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww YOU HAVE DONE A GREAT JOB!!! I thank u for the time and specially for the devotion… in this wonderful project… — Zulma Urrego
Hey John, Nice job!!! Great memories. Thanks! — John C. Henriksen
now that’s news!
Chris mentioned that old CSM amigo George Saunders just had a MacArthur Fellowship bestowed on hissef. well, dang, George, congrats! I had to chuckle when I went to his fan site and saw it had been hacked by a Turkish Armenian freedom fighter — complete with a waving flag and anthem. it’s back up now…
George’s latest short story collection, In Persuasion Nation gets qualified critical acclaim as is likely with a collection of stories. I haven’t read it yet. I’m waiting for a 600+ page novel to wield baseball-bat-to-torso, outlining in bruised flesh the practice, not of resistance to the contemporary cultural brutality, but of a thoughtlessly new way-of-going. potential’s there, but somehow mundaneity clogs the sweat pores. put a hold at the local library on Nation, review forthcoming.
Following his superb story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
rainbows
memories of recent and undocumented interactions with rainbows. dredging up a spectral wonder committed to film at the God’s Falls in North Ice land. and this text composed some months back on the back deck of a house no longer lived in:
what sight of rainbow gives full and transitory is not the will to wake up the next morning, it’s just late afternoon, well before sunset. lightning strikes the house. the radio quits. do the dead feel the hissing crack of close lightning like the living do? a bit of dread, a bit of shaken body wonder?
rainbow gives nothing except the radiation to brush the eyes. but in that brilliant subtlety there is everything. the smell of rain soaked earth and sage, cedar and piñon. when it is leaving. gone. all is gone, even memory of persistence of vision an illusion. after all, memory is imprint of the primal mind leaving the moment. rainbow gives only memories of itself, written in state-shifted electric bodies.
Kevin’s Memorial
Poor notes to remember what to say about Kevin.
— no pretension.
— the mystery of meeting.
— the energy, how it affects the self and the Other.
— memory is a persistence of these crossings, these impressions.
— that persistence is evidence we become something new in the process of coming-to-know an Other.
— sharing memories is a precious event.
— friendship is about the compatibility of energy.
— no way to quantify impressions.
— his painting.
— our shared Alaskan roots.
— delivery of comic irony.
— the Maine Trip: Bah-habba/lobstah.
— mention the website.
I had made a DVD of images of Kevin and his work that we had playing with a projector along the side of the chapel. Stefan took care of all the arrangements, an Icelandic cellist plays. Bill was quite eloquent, and Martha as well, speaking from the heart. It’s all sad.
persistence
it runs into several days of cloudy weather. so the snow persists a bit. nice to see.
Cadiz crossing
regarding the DVD that I pseudo-released a year ago. feeling for an “explanation” of why it is impossible to make a release of a work that is based in an art form that is performed live, juxtaposed with the wide issue of re-production and re-creation.
A performance of a composition that is indeterminate of its performance is necessarily unique. It cannot be repeated. When performed for a second time, the outcome is other than it was … A recording of such a work has no more value than a postcard; it provides a knowledge of something that happened, whereas the action was a non-knowledge of something that has not yet happened. — John Cage
few stars last night. high clouds move in right after the 1700 sunset. by 1900 there is a massive halo around the moon. there is a mouse in the back of the truck, with me. after several wakeful moments waiting to determine the situation, then, seeing the dang critter in profile against the window, I end up getting out of bed and ripping everything out of the back, piece-by-piece until I find a little brown desert mouse and shoo him out. finally fall asleep.
shifted locations, heading north towards Kelso, after a long detour to check out the fossil beds near at the south end of the Marble Mountains. after some poking around, and dredging up very fragmentary memory of place, engaging a coyote in a call-and-response dance around the steep and rugged terrain, I finally focus in on a rich location for the trilobites, or at least, the right place. finding a complete trilobite is something of luck and persistence. in the end I come up with a few fragments that are interesting, one with a head about 5 cm across, but very fragmentary (inarticulate, that is). all the while the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe rail line just to the south stays busy as long trainloads of stuff go by every 15 minutes or so. I make a recording at the Cadiz crossing, but find that my microphone is screwed up, between that and the heavy wind blowing. decided not to tour around too much, so, just headed into the Granite Mountains, stopping in a jumble of granitic intrusives something like Joshua Tree. the wind continues, but the altitude here is about 1000 meters higher. it’s COLD. missing a warm hat. the camping spot has sizable cholla cactus, juniper, and mesquite between the huge boulders. but it is north of the mountains, so the sun goes away at 1530. I cook half-a-dozen eggs, eat them for lunch-dinner, make some tea to warm up, but end up sitting in the cab of the truck to keep warm. hoping that the wind breaks enough to start a fire. if not, it’ll be an early night to huddle in the back.
no break. gusting, chilling. bright moon, few stars shining over orderly and neat blobs of buff phenocryst-laden slow-cooled granite. almost stumbled into the cholla tree that I parked too close to. gotta file the location at a high-level memory for night-retrieval in the case of a bathroom run. it would be a sad time to run into one of those in the dark, or anytime. so, no quiet sky-gazing, or fire-sitting. the box of firewood that I have been toting since the Dolores River trip with Loki, Lexie, and Janet will go back in the truck in the morning. and it’ll be up and away to Livermore as soon as I get up and start moving.
making soup
another shot at making lentil soup. free-style as usual. garlic, onions, carrots, curry, red Spanish peppers, stock, bit of oil, and the lentils. probably missing something. but it will get me through a week or so of non-bourgeois eating. while shuffle-playing the entire audio contents of the hard drive. samples from the randomsystem gig, from downloads, from quicktime files, and then some. mix. what is it about the remix, smaller and smaller samples. as time progresses. sampling. it is the gradual filling in of the social Wall around idiosyncratic being, at the same time the wall is being eroded by the simple action of entropy.
burning a candle in the sun, just to get rid of it. to be rid of, to consume, to use up, to finish. instead, to synthesize, to accumulate, to acquire, to gather together, sort, label, order. input-process-output. may as well let the days drain down to nothing. dry of time, dusty. sneeze in the sun again, twice always.
boat-spotting. is it the boats, of the phenomena of the boats moving through the water, the huge size disrupting the incompressible fluid, pushing it up, away, but never compressing it. potholes form this way. starting with a small crack, it fills with water, a tire rolls over the crack at high speed, something like a hammer coming down. the water has no place to go, but remains incompressible. it has to go somewhere when pressed down from the top, so there is enormous pressure on the side and bottom of the crack. it slowly expands, or rapidly, depending on the strength of the paving material, the rolling pressure of the tire impact, and the persistence of water. ever done a belly flop or slapped water flat with your hand, hard? like a brick wall. that’s what happens to bridge-jumpers. ouch.
reversal of perspective
goooood-mornin’ Lawd!
One day Monsieur Keuner was asked just what was meant by “reversal of perspective”; and he told the following story. Two brothers deeply attached to one another had a strange habit. They marked the nature of the day’s events with pebbles a white one for each happy moment and a black one for each moment of misfortune or displeasure. But when, at the end of the day, they compared the contents of the jars one found only white pebbles and the other only black.
Fascinated by the persistence with which they lived the same experience differently, they both agreed to ask the advice of an old man famed for his wisdom. “You don’t talk to one another enough” said the wise man, “Both of you must give the reasons for your choice, and discover its causes”. From then on they did so, and soon discovered that while the first remained faithful to his white pebbles and the second to his black ones, in neither jar were there as many pebbles as before. Where there had been about thirty there were hardly more than seven or eight. After a short while they went to see the wise man again. Both looked extremely miserable. “Not so long ago,” said one, “my jar was filled with pebbles the color of the night. My despair was unbroken; I continued to live, I admit, only through the force of habit. Now I hardly ever collect more than eight pebbles, but what these eight signs of misery represent has become so intolerable that I cannot go on like this.” And the other said: “Every day I piled up white pebbles.. Today there are only seven or eight, but these obsess me to the point that I cannot recall these moments of happiness without immediately wanting to relive them more intensely and, in a word, eternally. This desire torments me”. The wise man smiled as he listened to them. “Excellent. Things are shaping up well. Keep at it. And one thing: whenever you can, ask yourselves why the game with the jar and the pebbles arouses so much passion in you.” When the two brothers next saw the wise man it was to say “We asked ourselves the question but we could not find the answer. So we asked the whole village. You can see how much it has disturbed them. In the evening. squatting in front of their houses, whole families discuss the black and white pebbles. Only the elders and chieftains refuse to take part. They say a pebble is a pebble, and all are of equal value.” The old man didn’t conceal his pleasure. “Everything is developing as I foresaw. Don’t worry. Soon the question will no longer be asked: it has lost its importance, and perhaps one day you will no longer believe you ever asked it.” Shortly afterward the old man’s predictions were confirmed in the following way: a great joy overcame the members of the village; at the dawn of a troubled night, the rays of the sun fell upon the heads of the elders and chieftains, impaled upon the sharp-pointed stakes of the palisade. — Raoul Vaneigem