PhD – the neoscenes/tech-no-mad (b)log ::

9 : July : 201723 : September : 2018

place: Bundoora, NSW, Australia

A passing FYI: un-embargoed dissertation

I get an email awhile back:

Dear Dr Hopkins

Congratulations, your thesis record is now available via La Trobe University’s Research Online.

Access to the full text is embargoed/restricted until April 2016. [ed: that’s three years since official matriculation}

The permanent handle/URL to your thesis record in the repository is https://hdl.handle.net/1959.9/323047

Regards
Rozana

CRICOS Provider 00115M

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9 : May : 201513 : June : 2024

place: Boulder, Colorado

Full dissertation text: The Regime of Amplification

Well, I guess it’s about time to put the PhD dissertation text out there in .pdf form, so, here it is (PDF download):

The Regime of Amplification

Have at it, be polite, no grabbing, pushing, or shoving. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate. If you can prove that you’ve read it back to front, I’ll buy you a bottle of Herradura Añejo Tequila*, as long as we can split it!

*this is my hard liquor drink of choice since 1980 when it was hard to find even in the US southwest — cherished bottles imported into Iceland (bought in NYC at NY Liquors on Canal Street, the only place in NYC that carried it!) would last up to six months, like a fine Scottish whiskey, small glasses for sipping — none of that brutish slugging down shots or making margaritas with this fine distillate.

8 : July : 201429 : December : 2023

place: Prescott, Arizona

life feels raw

It feels terrifically raw in the moment: precarious, transitory, the inverse of epic, bound by tiny details.

Remember to breathe while gaping at the encroaching Void. Want to feel alive? Stare it down. To give force to this act, it must arise in acquiescence to all forms of resistance. Give way.

It doesn’t matter, recall is gone, mental decay leads to be-ing in the present only.

There are the ongoing international conversations that are happening, most notably on the empyre list where I have a forum to surface a number of ideas around The Regime of Amplification. But the issue comes up about whether I should simply send out copies of the dissertation (or my post-submission working copy that I play with on occasion). Traditionally, a PhD would take the dissertation text and ‘turn it into’ a book published on some university press. Given the content, style, and subject, and my distinct lack of time and ability to chase a publisher, this in not likely to happen. So, why not just distribute for free and distribute widely? I’ve rarely stuck with ‘tradition’ anyway, although the thought of somebody out there ‘stealing’ my ideas is … disturbing.

3 : July : 201418 : February : 2024

place: Prescott, Arizona

Window Weather

[ed: this is extracted from my dissertation, so some things are unexplained. However, I didn’t want to make large modifications, it’s more a teaser on a novel definition of ‘virtuality’ and the ‘virtual’. To illustrate the principle, and to suggest the relationship humans have with it, I use one particular manifestation of energized (matter): glass]

All organisms, humans included, evolve ways of modulating and attenuating the changing flows that are potentially harmful to them. Humans are exceptionally well-adapted to utilize and re-configure available flows to secure incrementally increased viability. In one instance they discovered that they could manipulate the most common forms of energized matter at the surface of the earth — silicon and oxygen, with bits of carbon, sodium, and calcium — to create a substance that was, at human scales, relatively impervious and that could constrict extant or generated flows in a variety of ways. more “Window Weather”

22 : April : 201321 : October : 2014

good karma, bad karma: dee-oh-enn-eee! d’oh!

I was sent a DHL tracking number on March 25, whereupon the package sat for days before finally leaving Melbourne on the 04 April. 05 April, it ends up in Cincinnati where it sits for more than two weeks before I finally start blasting emails out to the La Trobe Graduate School for yet another communications failure on their part.

Every piece of mission-critical communications from them had a major glitch associated with it (admissions letter preceded by word that I was NOT accepted; scholarship letter accompanied by email that I had not been given a scholarship; dissertation revision notification never sent to me, only my supervisor; final acceptance of dissertation notification not mailed until 6 weeks after the fact, making matriculation impossible last November, and then this DHL fiasco).

I called DHL and so did the Graduate School, and finally, last Saturday, the package was ‘found’ in the ‘unclaimed’ box, whatever that means. Delivered this morning in the middle of yet another spring blizzard.

This delivery is, of course, my diploma, at long last. 1369 days after I started at UTS in Sydney, and 387 days after submitting the dissertation itself. 982 days in the actual research process, and 132 days of hard-core writing.

22 : March : 201320 : February : 2014

place: Bundoora, VIC, Australia

done, Done, DONE!

In absentia, the PhD is granted, finally. Call me Dr. Jay…

18 : November : 20128 : April : 2018

yadda-yadda-yadda

The Call of the Bureaucrat:

Dear John

The Australian Higher Education Graduate Statement (AHEGS) process is to be implemented at La Trobe University and will provide students with a complimentary transcript, information on the degree completed and information about La Trobe University upon completion of their degree.

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) require a 100 word abstract to be printed on the AHEGS statement.

To ensure we are able to include all relevant information would you please provide a 100 word abstract of your thesis by return e-mail – immediately.

The above is required before we can complete your degree and recommend you to the next Academic Board meeting and therefore, be invited to undertake Graduation in 2013.

Please treat this as a matter of urgency.

The Reply (gah, yet another hoop to jump through! Their sense of urgency does not reflect on their own reciprocal level of activity: it’ll be almost a year from the time I submitted and the time the degree will be awarded next February — and only a month of that delay is remotely related to my procrastination):

This creative research PhD is an innovative exploration of a media arts practice and the energy-based world-view that the practice is sourced within. It elaborates on that energy-based approach while suggesting potential ways of addressing crucial issues facing human systems. Using the amplifier as a prototypical model, it explores energy flows across a wide range of systems to aid in understanding the complexities of sustainable creative processes and practices in our current techno-social world. The dissertation text and the integral multi-media (b)log space (https://neoscenes.net/blog/) that accompanies it critically examine the dynamic of human presence, encounter, and relationship, techno-social systems, and creative action.

22 : October : 201230 : November : 2015

place: Boulder, Colorado to Melbourne, VIC, Australia

philosophiae doctor

PhD, (doctor of philosophy), roll awkwardly off the tongue. even “Dr. Jay.” eah, probably best to ignore the whole thing and only use it when absolutely necessary. like, job-hunting.

whatever you want to call it. being sent for final binding remotely, shortly.

gah, where’s that Herradura?

30 : March : 201221 : October : 2014

place: Arvada, Colorado

FYI – thesis stats

Words 62396
Unique Words 7990
Characters 389373
Characters In Words 311542
Sentences 3469
Average Word Length 5.0
Average Sentence Length 89.8
Average Words Per Sentence 18.0
Long Words (7 or more characters) 18833
Short Words (3 or fewer characters) 25362
Syllables 107416
Monosyllabic Words 33568
Polysyllabic Words (3 or more syllables) 13738

Automated Readability Index 11.1
Coleman Index 12.0
Coleman-Liau Index 13.6
Dale Chall Readability Index 10.4
Dale Chall Readability Grade Level 16
Degrees Of Reading Power (DRP) 72
Degrees Of Reading Power Grade Level Greater than 12
Fang Easy Listening Formula 13
Fang Easy Listening Interpretation Standard
Farr-Jenkins-Patterson Score 36
Farr-Jenkins-Patterson Reading Ease Difficult
Flesch Reading Ease Score 43
Flesch Reading Ease Difficult
Flesch Reading Ease Grade Level 13 to 16 (College)
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 11.7
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Age 16.7
Fry Readability Grade Level 14
Fry Readability Reading Age 19
FORCAST Grade Level 11.9
FORCAST Reading Age 16.9
Gunning Fog Index (FOG) 16.0
Gunning Fog Reading Age 21.0
Henshall formula 533.8
Johnson Readability 46.2
Johnson Grade Level 8 or higher
Lexical Density 12.8
Laesbarhedsindex (LIX) Index 48.0
Laesbarhedsindex (LIX) Readability Difficult
Laesbarhedsindex (LIX) Grade Level 9
Linsear Write Readability 13.0
McAlpine EFLAW© Test 25.3
McAlpine EFLAW© Readability Very Easy
Miyazaki EFL Readability Index 36.6
Power-Sumner-Kearl Grade Level 7.0
Power-Sumner-Kearl Reading Age 12.0
Rate Index (RIX) 5.4
Rate Index (RIX) Grade Level 11
Raygor Readability Grade Level College
SMOG Score 14.5
SMOG Index 14.0
SMOG Reading Age 19.0
Spache Readability Index (Original) 4.3
Spache Readability Index (Revised) 3.7
Wheeler Smith Index 52.2
Wheeler Smith Grade Level Greater than 4

25 : February : 201221 : June : 2014

place: Arvada, Colorado

raking the coals

raking the coals, blowing on the fire, adding judicious amounts of fuel. recall watching my old friend John, the blacksmith, as he stoked a warming house-fire, how he was able to coax a cold fire to flame up almost immediately with a few stabs of the poker. it’s a skill.

I had presumed that David Bohm and Martin Buber would have more of a presence in the final thesis text, but curiously, they are not dominant voices at all. I was wondering the other day about this, with a little feeling that I had lost those two threads. But in my own terms, it is an example of resonance — where the resonant energy of inspiring source is translated into, literally, any other form. Bohm, I think, has presented such a complete (and somewhat complex) mapping of reality that to invoke it would require explaining the whole thing — something of the problem I have faced from the beginning of this thesis process. Many (most!?) thesis works seem to be firmly planted on an established map of a known territory. What’s the point? The difficulty of trying to circumscribe a new territory has reduced academic pursuit to an incremental braille of minutiae. The absorbing of creative arts endeavors into DCA/DA/PhD programs at hundreds of universities (all outside the US) has precipitated a wide front for a process of rationalization of practices that are not of that nature.

22 : July : 201114 : November : 2015

place: Prescott, Arizona

post PhD reality:

ignoble subservient drudgery or honorable exploitation?

As has already been indicated, the distinction between exploit and drudgery is an invidious distinction between employments. Those employments which are to be classed as exploit are worthy, honourable, noble; other employments, which do not contain this element of exploit, and especially those which imply subservience or submission, are unworthy, debasing, ignoble. The concept of dignity, worth, or honour, as applied either to persons or conduct, is of first-rate consequence in the development of classes and of class distinctions, and it is therefore necessary to say something of its derivation and meaning. — Torsten Veblen

In this moment of history, the values of dignity, honor, worth should be examined closely by all members of the political/economic elite (though they would have small care over such things), for it is clear that the situation of the commoner in Amurikan society is one where these attributes are being more or less quickly stripped from their lives of servitude to financial institutions. There are still choices one might make which are liberating to a limited degree, but the pressures to conform to the demands of that fiscal/market system are overwhelming to most.

Is another pathway possible?

18 : March : 201111 : October : 2024

place: Preston, VIC, Australia

interview with Niina: art & technology

Niina has been researching art and technology for some years now. We met when I was teaching my old netculture class at the Media Lab in the University of Art and Design Helsinki back in 2000. I participated in her research for her PhD then, and … now

Ei Niina — this is all I could manage, it’s impromptu, but honest, with a bit of humor mixed in… a little complicated, as there’s no time to write an essay about what world-view lies behind the answers. You might want to reference https://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/pixel.html an article I wrote for Pixelache in Helsinki in 2007 — the same year I did a workshop there too https://www.neoscenes.net/projects/pixel/index.php

you could also check out:

https://neoscenes.net/blog/ and search on
https://neoscenes.net/blog/?s=network
or so…
even
https://neoscenes.net/blog/date/2001/11

> 1.What changes have happened in your work and practices as an artist during the
> last ten years? Do you think your relationship with technology / or the way you
> use technology /has changed during this time?

My practice has widened intensively to take on a tough challenge of the entire techno-social system we are embedded within, are part of. Yes, this includes my relationship AND my understanding of the relationship between all flows that are the substance of technology. This also includes all aspects of life governed by techno-social protocol. When I use (a) technology I understand what I will both lose and gain when using that particular protocol. Using a technology is in fact, a changing of flows of energy that we are embedded in, part of. We are not separate in any way from everything else!

more “interview with Niina: art & technology”

24 : December : 201011 : October : 2024

place: KCL Campground, Carrizo Plains National Monument, California

change

The argument may be made that a fence, a window, an article of clothing, a wall are — one-and-the-same — deflectors of the extant natural flow of energies out there. They represent a set of energy deflectors imposed by humans on their environs.

The other issue, tied to this is the production of waste (unusable) heat energy which impinges on a locality after the use of high energy sources which are subsequently rendered into usable and unusable forms of energy with varying efficiency. The primary source of this unusable energy is in the actual production and maintenance of the energy deflector systems: making and installing a fence, fabricating a window (glass being an extremely energy-intensive manufacturing process), building a wall, a building, a dam. more “change”

12 : October : 201012 : October : 2024

From The Regime of Amplification to The Road

[editor: this document was used for a mid-way doctoral assessment at the University of Technology Sydney and no longer reflects the final content of the PhD dissertation as of the April 2012 submission at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The presentation was accompanied by the video that is posted at the end.]

Abstract

The DCA project “The Road” is a psycho-geographic perambulation through a web of personal, social, and universal trajectories which form a new knowledge-base on the cosmos as an entropic system of energy flows. Within this worldview the project explores human presence, encounter, and interaction including a close look at the effects of techno-socially prescribed protocols on those indeterminate flows of energy. As a multi-modal online data-space, the project offers a variety of navigational strategies connecting a rich variety of audio, video, text, and image sources from the candidate’s extensive personal archive of creative material.

Introduction

The armature for this DCA as originally proposed was the concept of the amplifier. An amplifier is essentially a device that takes an incoming flow of energy (signal), and through an influx of power, generates a defined outflow of energy with a greater (directed) intensity. The amplification process needs an independent energy source to increase the signal strength. It also requires a set of protocols that guide the flow of energy from input through output: a coherent signal is a controlled energy flow as defined by applied protocols.

The road, as an expression of a techno-social system (TSS), exemplifies, or, more precisely, is one of these protocol-defined pathways. It was this realization during the last year of research which shifted my focus from the amplifier to the road as both a real and metaphoric concept that opens a rich space for inquiry. The road allows the TSS to express amplified energy flows along its protocol-defined pathway. It is not difficult to conceptually extend the idea of the road as any pathway for the directed and concentrated expression of energy of a TSS. more “From The Regime of Amplification to The Road”

3 : November : 200912 : October : 2024

pox

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression that classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown, within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts will never be overthrown. — Albert Einstein

and this work will (already) require an a-cyclic slippage into and out of mechanistic language which makes so much of the territory un-mappable (before a new language can be framed). a skimmering skittering across hot metal plates causing dissipation and evaporation. (where transformed language is a compressed gas, waiting for temperature and pressure changes to expand to fill a dialectic space — wherein the words and word-constructs are tested for vacuity or fullness). Conscious use will govern whether or not there is a sense of movement or an underlying stasis in the text. Thankfully it is a DCA and not a PhD so there is plenty of room for experimentation.

[and a pox on all you slackers who underline in pen or pencil or highLight texts in library books. I don’t give a damn what you think is important, so keep yer grubby hands away from public domain books!]

12 : March : 200922 : May : 2021

place: Columbia, Missouri

Randy Olson

(00:56:52, stereo audio, 109.2 mb)

attend a screening last night of Randy Olson’s Flock of Dodos at the RagTag Cinema in Columbia. he was in attendance. and again this morning, he gave a presentation for science academics at the university as a part of their Darwin Days (where the Chair of the Life Sciences Department pointed out they were not allowed to say “celebration” but rather “commemoration”). the film’s premise was to map out the way both sides of the evolution/creationist divide are communicating and presenting their POV to the public. scientists are shown to be poor communicators, creationists shown to be poor communicators except for some who know the value of style and appearance (the Discovery Institute being the chief antagonists posing as a non-partisan think-tank). they are the ones leading the issues. in the same way Republicans have been successful in constructing the narratives guiding the story-following population to the conservative Nirvana. Olson, a former Harvard PhD biologist transitioned to Hollywood via a degree at USC’s film school. he now tells stories that bridge the divide between science and the general public. but the leap from stories to action — stories that form a context for action — well, there is generally a passivity that is a condition of listening/watching a story recitation. listening to stories has to stop at some point. so, the story has to have a transitional mechanism leading to action. how does that work? telling a story and have action arise out of the exchange of energies. the attentive focus of absorbing a story transforming into world-changing action. in the evening Nick and I catch the screening of Sizzle also by Olson. overheard today:

mass media is directed at the pelvic floor, but what about having Kegels for Consciousness…?

later a repaired drum appears, as does a Tibetan singing bowl, and a basket full of instruments. resonant sound-making ensues.

18 : August : 200829 : December : 2023

place: Manhattan, New York

massive transit

hurdles to decent mass transit. it’s far easier to drive into New York City than to take the train. The Town of Bedford controls the parking area for the train. to get a day permit one has to show proof-of-residency and the registration of the vehicle to be parked in the ‘municipal’ parking lot at the train.

are there any bike racks at the station? yes, one for three bikes. sheesh. but, you can’t take bikes on the train, anyway, and there are no bike paths or lanes anywhere near the train station … (the curse of a traveler to be able to critically compare and contrast an extended sequence of different places and their relative infrastructural differences.)

the US should take a long and hard look at the level of organization that many European states have accomplished to promote the use of bicycles and mass transit as one answer to the over-reliance on and over-consumption of hydrocarbons.

drop by Jessie’s place on the upper East Side for a f2f and nice lunch. good to cross paths with a fellow BrainStormer.

and finally get back to PhotoCare to pick up the Nikon. been feeling half-naked without an image-making device. resorting to the phone-camera is never really satisfying at all.

19 : October : 200728 : December : 2023

place: Düsternbrooke, Kiel, Germany

panarchy

running across this term via Paul on the iDC list. as he does a PhD on the subject. another name for how to organize life among humans. never an easy task, everybody leaves it to those who want the feeling of power that it brings.

Panarchy, a term devised to describe evolving hierarchical systems with multiple interrelated elements, offers an important new framework for understanding and resolving this dilemma. Panarchy is the structure in which systems, including those of nature (e.g., forests) and of humans (e.g., capitalism), as well as combined human-natural systems (e.g., institutions that govern natural resource use such as the Forest Service), are interlinked in continual adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring, and renewal. — C. S. Holling

7 : March : 200722 : November : 2024

place: en route Brussels Midi, Belgium - Maastricht, Netherlands
enclosure: https://neoscenes.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/20070307_043_buskers_be.mp3 9360358 audio/mpeg

more meetings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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