posted

the feral grin

smartphones: images, selfies, fazebuch, instaham: the profusion of masks that appear on social media screens illustrate how much humanity has been stripped from the reductive process of the portrait and the self-portrait.

Frozen grins: the perfectly engineered white teeth of middle class prosperity. Forced from the gullet of consumption. Masks all, covering the psycho-spiritual emptiness of those same middle class lives.

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  • place: Hyannis, Nebraska

entering the fourth full Saros cycle

self-portrait, waiting for totality, Hyannis, Nebraska, August 2017

This is how I enter my fourth full Saros Total Solar Eclipse Cycle of 18 years (#145)

04 January 1639 …
20 July 1963 — 31 July 1981 — 11 August 1999 — 21 August 2017 — 02 September 2035
… 17 April 3009

Likely, I will not make the 5th cycle.

posted
  • place: Chaco Canyon National Park, New Mexico

self-portrait, Pueblo de Arroyo

self-portrait, Pueblo del Arroyo, Chaco Canyon National Park, New Mexico, November 2016

From the center of one collapsed civilization to another … but damn nice to be there after the dicey jeep trip into the park during an anomalous flash-flood (in the dark!) that started to build steam in Bloomfield and before that with snowy white-outs coming over Cumbres Pass.

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  • place: Granite Mountain Wilderness, Arizona

self-portrait at the alligator juniper

The third trip in the last year to the largest alligator juniper (Juniperus deppeana) tree in existence (twenty-six feet in diameter — see Ginny for scale!). It is now a strange and haunting memorial to the nineteen Granite Mountain hotshots who perished in the Yarnell Hill fire — just a few days after cutting a firebreak line that specifically saved this unique tree from the Doce fire.

Went on into the Cedar Spring wash area — it was flowing with copious amounts of snowmelt.

self-portrait, at the alligator juniper, Granite Mountain Wilderness, Arizona, January 2016

posted
  • place: online and Nantes, France

AudioBlast Festival #3: les frontières sonores

AudioBlast Festival #3: les frontières sonores, online and Nantes, France, 01 March 2015

Sound and music networked practice is increasingly significant, the public is very interested in this type of emerging practice, and Apo33 continues to develop this unique festival in the world! There is no equivalent.

Audioblast is a festival from cutting edge using digital tools to cross the concert, performance and particular form of exposure where the public can sit, listen to concerts, roam and chat with the artists during their online “live” sets; with possibilities for live chats with the musicians. The public can both listen at the Plateforme Intermédia which also allows a wider public into this world.

Audioblast Festival is an annual edition in the program of the Association and will be presented as part of the cultural project for APO33 at La Fabrique.

neoscenes was invited to jump into the festival for a one-hour live improv stream between 1400-1500 (GMT+1) Sunday, 01 March in Nantes (6-7 AM Mountain Standard Time – Arizona / 8-9 AM Eastern Standard Time – NYC / (you can go to World Time Buddy to calculate other time zones).

I would quibble with the ‘cutting-edge’ designation — I’ve been involved in streaming sonic (and visual) performance for almost 20 years now. It’s more ‘fringe’ than cutting edge. And the is likely more an issue of a distinct lack of solid historical references for most artists who are now discovering these mediums of expression. Even when I’ve been teaching about such stuff, for example, at CU-Bolder in 2012-13, the students were repelled by the thought of approaching a cutting edge, they literally couldn’t handle it: too indeterminate. (every time I remember that teaching experience, I wince.)

For the last five years, sonic art has seen (heard) huge growth among young artists as the tools are ubiquitous and pocketable in the form of smart phones. I can now stream over wifi using my iPad. Of course, it was possible 10-15 years ago as well, but it was a lot more unstable and often complicated. Today, at AudioBlast there were no technical glitches during my set. Good!

Audio in the network: a digital sound festival using the network as a venue for diffusing experimental, drone, noise, field recordings, sound poetry, electronic, and contemporary music. The festival will be streamed live online (you’ll need VLC or another ogg player — iTunes doesn’t work for this, argh, they switched to (open source) ogg at the last moment) and in quadraphonic sound at the venue La PLATEFORME INTERMÉDIA – LA FABRIQUE (4, Boulevard Léon Bureau – 44000 Nantes – France).

The theme this year is “Sonic Frontiers” / “les frontières sonores” :: the full schedule and the list of artists and another place to listen from (https://apo33.org:8000/audioblast.ogg)

Audio has been instrumental in pioneering many digital and communications technologies and is a versatile and creative medium for gaining deeper understanding of digital coding languages both visual and text based. Sound can travel and encourage a more horizontal and collaborative society, which also has the potential to germinate innovative practices across mediums and genres. During 2015 through the framework of “Sonic Frontiers”, APO33 will question and debate the ideas around audio migration, how sounds travel, influence and structure cutting edge music practices and sonic arts.

[documentation of the performance]

self-portrait in the studio, Prescott, Arizona, February 2015

posted
  • place: in the cloud

what to think?

EJ happens on this disturbing instance in front of his house: disturbing to me at least as I research the costs of ever-expanding surveillance (as a form of feedback) within the social system that we in the US happen to be participating in these days. Look for yourself: the 19th block of Mapleton Ave. in Boulder. I plan to complain to Google about this — in Europe at least my car and body would be fuzzed-out like my license plate — but they likely will only fuzz me out, not more. The images are from August 2012 when I was house-sitting for those folks… In StreetView you can see that I am wearing Nike socks, and you can even see inside the cab of my truck.

caught via

posted
  • place: Forsbach, Germany

self-portrait, Mary’s garden

self-portrait, Mary's garden, Forsbach, Germany, June 2013

I’ve been wanting an image of this CRYSTAL for some years, and this particular visit to Mary’s is the perfect occasion. Volker snapped this for me. Earlier in the day Mary makes a huge lunch table for a small group of visitors, I was included for the moderated discussion around the new Fluxus Academy. More on that later.

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CLUI: Day Twenty-Four — touring

self-portrait, Blue Lake Wildlife Area, Utah, April 2010

Back down to Blue Lake for another definitive workout doing the full length of the lake twice. The far end is shallow and covered with a fine mud with nodules of organic material, almost like crypto-biotic soil, and extending the hand into the mud, it’s warm, though I can’t tell whether that is an affect of the heat-flow driving the upwelling action that has generated the spring, or merely sun-warmed sediment. The water temperature is perfect, right around 82F, with the air temp at 50F, a great combination for working out.

There is a shallow play of fear when getting into the water — snakes? big fish? underwater dangers? Loch Ness monsters? It’s deep and not absolutely clear as it normally is because of the heavy wind and dust. The depth is indicated, though, through the deepness of the blue. In the middle it feels deep: gravitational fluctuations operating on the body. While overhead, the F/A-18’s fight gravity and each other.

Then a short photo trip to do a portrait of Wendover Will and some images of the casino landscaping. Plenty of material there! But somehow I am tired of simply illustrating western society in wasteful and dis-connected abandon. I’ve seen too much of it, and there simply is too much out there!

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CLUI: Day Thirteen

live-fire range, shattered .50 cal bullet, South Base, Utah, April 2010

A long cycle ride south from South Base, the (doh!) southern part of the airbase. Into the region down-range of the heavy machine-gun target range and where fragments of mock-up Little Boy bombs (prepped with high explosives, not nukes) may be found along with tens of thousands of rounds of oxidized-green-sheathed bullets scattered everywhere on the surface of the playa. The cycling is a bit surreal when surrounded by mountains floating on silver lakes. Lots of effort into the wind, but otherwise, it’s a flat out ride. Slight differences in the surface texture, and then the human altered areas — the dikes and drainage berms of the saline concentrating solar evaporation ponds.

Then there are the bunkers and V-1 test area. Matt said the casinos use a couple bunkers for records storage, as does the city of Wendover. The Simparch-designed CLUI South Base Clean Livin’ center is a cool space — completely self-contained with a PV electricity system, gray water recycling system, and a composting toilet. Along with the refurbished Quonset hut it makes for a homey post-nuclear space for quiet meditation.

posted
  • place: Margaretville, New York

snow-shoeings

Can’t think of a better place to be than here at the ski house with my godson Simon, my old friend Bill, and a few other folks. Chorizo and eggs for breakfast, then everybody else heads out to ski. I stay at the house and do some snow-shoeing through the deep snow in the ‘back 40,’ and otherwise, chill out.

This is the way I enter the New Year, the warm Sith hat thanks to Zander.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

#48

Self portrait in bed, waking up to celebrate a birthday with a glass of tea. In a silent and empty house. <sigh>

The time of a man’s life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. — Marcus Aurelius