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.

7 : May : 201130 : November : 2015

place: Preston, VIC, Australia

back to B&B

Martin Buber and David Bohm — German-speaking Hasidim Jew phil-theo-logist/sopher and Anglo, McCarthy-black-listed quantum physicist. Unlikely combination, but in my practice, my pathway, they elicit a resonance unlike any others, although there are Legion sources of energized engagement that have made my trajectory a rich experience. All those Others who share the way(s). But I will work with these two as they both resonate. Simple, complex. One provoking an imaged-cosmos where there are no things, but only activated orders of manifestation, and this condition of being directly informing the way of interaction and relation between the Self and the Other. And the other thinker, sketching a cosmos which itself comes-to-be in the reality of relationship: within the encounter lies the source of all things.

Both these worldviews are highly idiosyncratic visions of the cosmos and also, consequentially, of human relation, but neither of them are mutually exclusive of the other. I find my own worldview shares at least this characteristic with both of them. But there are other ways in which our models overlap, and it is these pathways of flow which will stimulate the thesis.

The image of humans and their view of the cosmos that I always describe in a classroom setting is: (this after getting to know the students at least a bit) — “it’s as though we are dancing around the Void, each of us, in groups, pairs, alone, catching glances out of the corners of our eyes of it, calling out what is looks like in throat-tones frantic with fear, joy, and wonder. Sometimes a whole group will shout out in unison, the agreed-upon vision. Others stay to speaking the wind. Occasionally we turn to face it on, or are rudely pulled by the shoulder by another who is straying close to the edge. It has no name, yet we all insist on calling It something. Even when we turn our backs directly to it, we can feel it, perhaps even more than when facing it.”

So, idiosyncrasy is a way of movement (as point-of-view needs change), which leads to a clear, albeit self-relative, experience (impression) and the consequent expressions while regarding, receiving, that. Springing from these two pathways (im- and ex-pression) is a third which dictates, in part, the motion of the point-of-view. It is a feedback mechanism which generates, gradually or quickly, a worldview that touches on the Void if only by discrimination against what cannot be directly named.

Okay, working (or “working”) in the office much of the week and weekend, not too effective, but I think I did finally begin to imagine a framework to hang all these words on. And it feels like one that will work. Norie gave me a couple other theses of former students of hers — very interesting works. My intuition about her seems well-placed. And it’s a funny expression of the morphing social network that I’ve participated in the last 20 years. Connected.

And swimming. Hope to hit 100 km/3 months by the time I move on. That’s attainable, easily if I take care of things.

23 : March : 201110 : April : 2023

place: Preston, Victoria, Australia

memory, it occurs

The problem with externalized memory is that when memory is extracted from the self, we may no longer feel its effects – in recall, in re-living. We may only simulate the feeling of it, or, at most, internally resonate with the symbolic values represented in its external reproduction. Individual embodied memory is directly experienced as a changed body state. Externalizing memory is a particular and collective phenomena which arises when the pain of actual experience and its associated memory is too much to bear. Externalizing is available from the same (tele-)technologies which cause the pain to begin with — dislocation and the pain of separation. Perhaps technological development may not proceed fully until the relevant memories are externalized to begin with, then the pain of alienation is transferred to a painless place.

This is illustrated through the wide-spread propagation of pictorial documentation and the subsequent sharing of those images. The originary documentation occurs to enhance or prove the fact that the individual was fully living; at the same time of documentation, the very documentary process dislocates the self from being fully in the life flowing around, causing a pain of loss.

It’s like looking at a stranger’s snapshots from their youth. They contain only generic and shared cultural triggers, nothing more (or less). Beyond that, there are resonant memories in the viewer, based in the configuration of their own experiences, and while these can be quite strong at times, the difference between lived experiential memory and those resonances is significant.

9 : December : 201012 : October : 2024

place: Whanganui, New Zealand

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

The official blurb for the workshop:

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

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

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

28 : October : 201029 : December : 2023

technology as life

The view that technology may be represented as a human constructed/refined pathway for the limited sense of controllable ‘natural’ forces (energies, power, flows) seems to be productive, but it needs to be tested more against deterministic or Utopian views of technology. I’m pragmatic about the outcome being an overlooked pathway hidden among the trillion-plus unique URLs in the webiverse. Oh well. Ultimately technology is a set of (often socially-proffered) choices that the individual makes as to where to channel his/her life-energies. The channels or pathways are multiplex and are influenced by collectives of Others (both dead and alive), but ultimately are there for the individual to engage or not. Of course, there are social systems which have set rigid command-and-control systems in place to radically limit the choice of pathways available. Other social systems have evolved elaborate methodologies for persuasion so that the participating population will feel compelled to utilize certain technological pathways rather than others — often not even being aware that their ‘choice’ is an illusion.

There is a precursor situation which influences the development of external shared social protocols and that situation is within the refined evolutionary structure of the body-system. The body, as with any life-form, is itself a powerful system for the (consumption and) directed expression of energies, both internally through various sub-systems, and externally as a unitary and singular body. It is the primary technological system (and then all life is a technology…!).

16 : October : 20102 : February : 2016

acceptance

Yes, as an originator man is solitary. He stands wholly without bonds in the echoing hall of his deeds. Nor can it help him to leave his solitariness that his achievement is received enthusiastically by the many. He does not know if it is accepted, if his sacrifice is accepted by the anonymous receiver. Only if someone grasps his hand not as a “creator” but as a fellow-creature lost in the world, to be his comrade or friend or lover beyond the arts, does he have an awareness and a share of mutuality. An education based only on the training of the instinct of origination would prepare a new human solaritariness which would be most painful of all. — Martin Buber

Buber, M., 1985. Between Man and Man, New York, NY: Collier Books.

The originatory creative act perhaps requires a (painful) level of social isolation — is this the source of the ‘tortured artist’ syndrome? This in contrast to the integrated flow of socialized encounter with the Other which is (also?) the locus of creative action. hmmm…

12 : October : 201030 : January : 2025

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”

26 : September : 20107 : February : 2022

assessments

And so, encroaching on the last major procedural hurdle before the doctorate goes to the external examiners (next year sometime). The panel assessment seems to be routine and bureaucratic. Public speaking in compressed time frames is no fun. When there’s always too much to get across in the extremely limited time frame, and the highly institutionalized context allows for negligible true dialogue. In some ways, the process is a deeply laughable (chortle?) imitation of what it claims to be, or what it once perhaps was. That is, learning as a process of open and sustained dialogue between two or more humans. Facing the unknown that each other presents, or both facing the unknown of what is, or what is out there. Contemporary ‘education’ is a thin and watery drool coming from somewhere up above — meager remains of what’s left of a blasting monsoon of shared life that brings one to a deeply profound awareness of that-which-is. Instead we squelch around in evaporating puddles of shared encounter, wishing for more rain, and complaining about the weather.

Tomorrow, it happens. We shall see. No brolly, no Wellies…

So, over this hurdle, and maybe the final work commences, perhaps finishing earlier than scheduled, or at least that inspiring outcome is a concept on the radar.

Meanwhile, surviving week-to-week, in part through the acupuncture and massage treatments from Heiji Cho and some of the Chinese Traditional Medicine (CTM) students here at UTS. The gall bladder channel is the one being worked — to release rising yang from the liver. hmmm. The treatments work, they seems to diffuse the migraines that do show up and eventually, as is common, with any lock, the migraines will vanish. I am confident of this, and only wish I had come to this conclusion last year, or even earlier as these episodes interrupted life from time to time. The stress of movement came on such a regular basis, but there was no thought to find a source, find a working solution, a cure. It was only the process of gritting the teeth until a dark and quiet room could be found for the duration. Western meds never really worked, they only covered the symptoms at best, and in some cases a single pill cost as much as a full 90-minute acupuncture treatment session.

But choosing to undertake a treatment of what is known as ‘alternative’ medicine was always a difficult stretch. Despite input from trusted others who had benefited. There was the hardship of paying cash from the pocket to the practitioner when cash was never so abundant.

12 : January : 201017 : April : 2024

fealty to nexus

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.

1 : January : 201029 : December : 2023

the American Dream is only to survive

David Brooks, columnist at the New York Times writes in this commentary on New Years Day:

Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in — technology, technocracy, centralized government control — have failed them in this instance.

I have always enjoyed his pragmatism and basic awareness of a wider historical context. It frames the American Way as (merely another) expression of a global continuum of human presence on the planet. And he seems largely to avoid the hybridized reli(geo)-political Destiny’s Child(ish) mentality that so pervades the fragmentary remnants of mediated public discourse in this declining nation-state. more “the American Dream is only to survive”

6 : November : 200931 : December : 2023

place: Millers Point, NSW, Australia

a multi-modal life

If I could have written this DCA thing before, I would have. It is a question of style and form only. As I have already written reams (megabits) of pure (well, relatively pure) text already, megabits, not in Word, but in BBEdit, close to code, pure code; not to mention the reams of paper writing that preceded that. On an old portable manual typewriter. From picnic tables in the Great Sand Dunes on crisp winter mornings, to attic havens in the dark Icelandic winter. Drilling words out out out to the many Others. Printed direct onto papers from flat or slightly curvilinear screens to nine-pin printers. Usually, on the obverse, each sheet of that paper was already a xerographic work in itself, thanks to sometimes free access to photocopy machines in various places. Photocopy art. Nobody knows what that’s about anymore. And the postcards. The thousands of them, all silver-prints. Tight hand-written like the 4000+ pages of journal, with double-ought Rapidograph pen and permanent India inks. Sometimes exploding with the pressure shifts of flying too much. Is a remix in order, of all this life-energized output, a tracing of threads? Correlated with all the memorable human encounters — teaching, exhibitions, studios, happenstance, friends, friends-of-friends, shared meals, and strangers — what can be made from it? And how to proceed.

Big question. The difference between that lived praxis and the reflection on praxis. Or is there a difference, is a difference necessary? Or is the difference a construct itself, an artificial category, a social imprint? A remnant of Whorf’s linguistic framing which, simply stated, says that a language alters the way one thinks. Or, to go a bit further than Whorf, that a language is a particular set of (neural) pathways upon which energized thought follows along, passes through. The pathways form as the language portions of thinking form in ones embodied presence. This suggests that a multi-modality of expression is an attempt or penchant to explore different pathways of (neural) energy flow, each along its accustomed way. Life is multi-modal. And energy is the substrate that the modes are embossed in. Embossed patterns which fill with flow, or over-flow. When energy does not have a predetermined pattern to move within, how will it express? It will leak into other spaces, bleed over into other patterns, or simply build up in some corner of the body until it is expressed in pathology.

19 : October : 200914 : November : 2015

Proxemics

I would prefer that this whole thesis stay out of the regime imposed by semiotics — that is, the approach to social inquiry as an expression of how the dominant worldview is itself dominated by abstracted elements, rather than focusing on the flows of energy themselves. The abstracted systems do, of course, have a heavy bearing on the regime of flows within the social, as they do govern the pathways along which energy flows. However, in order to understand the dynamics of the flows which underlie the abstractions, one has to clear away the abstraction. I hope to frame the issue of language and protocol only to the degree that makes it possible to subtract it from the picture.

Consider the difference as framed following: when two people are speaking to each other, one can make a fundamental structural observation that breaks down the process into the movement of sonic energy and the presence of language-as-protocol. What is the sonic element? It is the movement of embodied energy, energy arising from the embodied presence of one person, arising from the complex negentropic life-processes of one’s self. This particular energy ‘form’ arises through the precise evolutionary configuration of body that allows for that particular expression: the lungs, the throat, the voice box, the mouth, and so on. It is projected through the ‘medium of substances’ from the Self to the Other, into the embodied presence of the second. Into the ear canal to energize the neural system that is hearing. This is a fundamental. This phenomena exists independent of the language being used, and regardless whether that language is shared by the two people.

Proxemics then becomes a question of potentialities and possibilities of flow or not-flow as proffered by the arrangement of energized bodies (at all scales!) — not simply a systematic coding of the arrangements and orientations of bodies in a Cartesian space. Hall does include body-heat (thermal code) in his list of proxemic behavior along with other sensory “codes,” but stays away from the actuality and implications of energetics (as illustrated by the previous paragraph. (A System for the Notation of Proxemic Behavior, Edward T. Hall, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 65, No. 5, Selected Papers in Method and Technique (Oct., 1963), pp. 1003-1026)

The presence of language, then, is a formulator of meaning. Language does not carry energy itself. What one says is different than how one says it. The use of language (merely) imposes a modulation (amplitude, frequency, in time), a protocol on the energy movement. This modulation is a learned social function. And of that imposed modulation: when examined closely, it loses some of its monumental qualities (semiotics-as-deterministic-abstraction-of-abstraction):

There is no language in itself, nor any universality of language, but a concourse of dialectics, patois, slangs, special languages. There exists no ideal “competent” speaker-hearer of language, any more that there exists a homogeneous linguistic community … there is no mother tongue, but a seizure of power by a dominant tongue within a political multiplicity. — Deleuze and Guattari (Rhizome)

14 : October : 200912 : October : 2024

trauma

Yes, there was an event; yes, an event began, barely, when she began to say something. But this event did not come to fruition, for nothing, nothing really, happened — except a sudden defamiliarization of my world, an unforeseen estrangement brought about by the least violent of all acts — the mere emitting of sounds — that topple the sense-structure of my world. After she breached my silent existence, silence returned, devouring both of us again by expropriating my ability to respond. So nothing, nothing really, happened. But this nothing, compared to “idle chatter” and the “forgetfulness” of an ordinary conversation, was much more dramatic. It produced in me an effect like no other. Considering what happened, or rather, what failed to take place, I must confess that I was profoundly affected by it. In fact, I am still living that event through the unique nothingness brought home to me by the incident, suffering from it, agonizing over it as an event that keeps returning as a non-event. In any case, the undeniable fact is that there was an event, there took place a situation that, although nothing, nothing really happened in it, is still happening now. It was like a traumatic “primal scene,” forever gone but constantly coming back. — Briankle Chang, (1996) Deconstructing Communication: Representation, Subject, and Economies of Exchange. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (p 224)

Reflecting on the abstracted essence of the gap between the self and the other: it suggests the reality that we cannot share the same point of view. There exists an infinitely deep irruption, separation, or gap, between the Self and the Other. This is defined partly by the presence of the energized matter that makes up our bodies and by the fact that this particular embodied form of matter cannot be collocated or commingled with another body. There is the warm and wet topology of sensual engagement, but this is not collocation, though some would like to believe that it is. The Self will never share the same point-of-view as the Other. My eyes cannot be collocated with yours. I may exchange places with you, but when all is change along the arrow of time, what you experienced there and then, I cannot experience there and now. The interstitial chasm exists within constant change and flow and it exists as long as life is embodied. Some models of transcendence suggest a unification, an omniscient one-ness, after embodiment ends, but here and now we all face the challenge of hypostasis, that puzzling duality of existing in a transitory body now and yet connected with an apparently detachable spirit before and after.

Communication cannot not take place. — ibid, p. 227

12 : October : 200929 : December : 2023

hydrogen economies

Economic efficiency is not correlated to the material efficiency within a limited system. (as example, the Icelandic Hydrogen Economy scam — where the production of the consumed goods necessary for running the infrastructure is remote: off the island and not at all within local system. None of the materials in the infrastructure are available locally on the island, none, except for the human consumers and the human bodies for local construction labor. That simple fact takes economic advantage of cheaper remote industrial labor, ecological damage, etc, and removes those factors from the costing of the local system. Local politico-economic policies are calculated and framed without considering the material re-sourcing.) This approach could be the biggest factor driving the lack of material efficiency of the global system where the feedback mechanisms are more localized and limited and driven by abstracted profit frameworks (which are locally influenced by taxation/government, shareholders, boards, consumers). And very often there is a complete ignorance of the physical reality of the (remote) resource extractives industries which prop up the whole system. If one travels to the location where large-scale (and generally un-sustainable) resource extraction is occurring, it is inevitable that there are social and environmental issues, it’s just a matter of whether they are discoverable under present knowledge-bases, or whether they are recognized by contemporaneous social milieus. Life is a transitory phenomena at all scales. When available energy sources (concentrations of matter) are exhausted, life cannot proceed.

7 : October : 200929 : December : 2023

place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

(in) no time

Willie Wagtails (Rhipidura leucophrys), Minors (Manorina melanocephala) …

that entry stopped there. no time to observe and note things when constantly consuming texts and coping with the daily movements. it is highly inefficient to commute for this kind of work. research is 90% online, and moving between home and the office sucks up at least 1.5 hours a day. strange that it is able to absorb so much time when it’s just a short distance away. walking takes about 40 minutes each way, though, and waiting for the bus and the slow crawl down George Street is tedious. I find that the mind-space that I take on when in that mode is very unproductive and deadening. I observe, while hearing is constantly assaulted, occasionally some energizing encounters, but the locally dominant Asian sense of personal space I find deeply conflicting with my own. and the reflexive sensory protocols I developed through the time in the desert and mountains has been thoroughly destroyed — no stars to see, not even planets, and it is only in the 16th-floor office that its really possible to watch the weather develop albeit through heavy windows that cannot be opened and are filthy on the exterior (I cleaned the large inside pane of the window immediately over my desk, much to the amusement of several of the other grad students). optical clarity — if I’m forced to look at the world through a glass filter, it’s got to be clean!
more “(in) no time”

23 : September : 200921 : March : 2020

code and money

Michael Bauwens on the iDC list:

I think the important insight that travels from free software to money is this. Power lies in the code and in the invisible structures that enable or dis-enable actions and relationships, what Alexander Galloway calls ‘protocolary power.’ The great insight of the current age is that money has a code as well. But just as we do not have the power to change the code of microsoft, we do not have (yet) the power to change to code of political money, so the alternative world-constructing route is to peer produce our own, differently coded money.

sotto voce: This brings up the thought that code and money are both likewise abstracted representations of Power that have to be actualized through two processes: 1) a participatory social grouping who choose to believe (have faith) in the power of the abstraction to cause material change in their lived existence and 2) a means for the abstracted instrument to interface with a real (material) regime of existence. Power, in the end has to be or has to have available a way to apply itself to life, to an individual life, to be delivered (as that change).

For example, code describes what a device can or should do in theory. It needs the device to make that actually happen. Code without the physical transmission of power (kilo-calories, joules, megawatts, whatever) is a complete abstraction and is of no consequence. The machine or interface that actualizes the code is embedded in a specific field of power flows — i.e., the electrical generation and delivery system, manufacturing systems that depend on transportation networks which depend on hydrocarbon fuel power, etc. This larger techno-social infrastructure that is essentially a field of directed energy flows depends on a whole host of humans believing that the code will ultimately improve their lives on earth. If there arises a doubt that the code will do this, the whole system starts to unravel. If it becomes clear that the code is failing to bring power to the user, they will stop putting their life-energy into propping up that techno-social protocol and the infrastructure it is embedded within.

The code of religious teaching, the code of social behavior, the code of the machine, and the code of economic instrument all have the characteristic that they are completely dependent on being actualized this way, else they have NO power. In the end, the code is merely a socially prescribed pathway along which real energy is forced to flow.

Faith in code(d abstraction) produces a shared or centralized capital of potential power, but there always needs to be a tangible means for translation from code to be-ing. The body is the primary means for code to become lived action or the source of applied and energetic change. That would be the minimum device necessary, all other devices are simply amplifications of the body-as-energy source.

With the demonstration of faith as an applied and directed energy flow through a code comes the often terrifying expression of directed social power. On the other hand, when the individual participant in a social system seeks and finds/makes expression not according to The Code, the dominant collective immediately loses a fraction of its ability to direct energy as it wills.

12 : June : 200914 : November : 2015

place: Boulder, Colorado

another 50th

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

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

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

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

16 : May : 20098 : October : 2014

place: Golden, Colorado

Holly’s graduation

Golden High School graduation at Brooks Field on the School of Mines campus on what starts off as a dreary and chilly morning with uncharacteristic clouds sticking to the foothills. Holly is the Valedictorian. the weather clears up by the end when Montse and I head back to the house for final party preparations. I take the opportunity to get the whole Williamson Clan together for a group portrait.

fourteen hours later, celebrations finally end with a round of toasts for the graduate.

Dear Holly. What a pleasure to be here to celebrate this time with you! The teacher who spoke at graduation is precisely right that whenever two humans cross pathways they are both changed in ways that are not (always) immediately apparent. This is a powerful principle of life: when we realize and take to heart that this occurs, we may intensify the outcomes of these encounters through open, honest, and unfettered engagement. This engagement should be attentive, concentrated, and focused. Through this, any other human encountered becomes a collaborative partner in a dynamic creative process that is the essence of life. As is taught, the next person you encounter may be the Buddha, and thus, how you engage governs the potential for enLightenment. I wish you all the best in your near and far future; that the pathways you walk will be full of those transformative encounters; and that the transformations bring the breath-taking inspiration that makes life joyous. Life is a phenomena! You are phenomenal! At any point you have questions, answers, observations, or discoveries to share, I am happy to give you my attention. Thank you for being you! oxoxox jh

23 : January : 200914 : November : 2015

place: Prescott, Arizona

and so on

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable. — John Stuart Mill

Viva idiosyncrasy!

16 : January : 20097 : February : 2022

arts birthday tomorrow

This year I didn’t manage to jump into the fray with a live stream, but many other folks did — the party has already started in some places, you can browse the schedule of events here… and at ORF Kunstradio

“Art’s Birthday” is an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou.

He suggested that 1,000,000 years ago, there was no art. But one day, on the 17th of January to be precise, Art was born. According to Filliou, it happened when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Modest beginnings, but look at us now.

Filliou proposed a public holiday to celebrate the presence of art in our lives. In recent years, the idea has been taken up by a loose network of artists and friends around the world. Each year the Eternal Network evolves to include new partners – working with the ideas of exchange and telecommunications-art.

After Filliou’s death in 1987, some artists began to celebrate Art’s Birthday with mail art, fax and slow scan TV events in the spirit of his concept of “The Eternal Network” or “La Fête permanente”. The birthday parties took place in different cities across the world and artists were asked to bring birthday presents for Art — works that could be shared over the network.

Art’s Birthday Party has never been a formal event, but was always organized on an ad hoc basis through the network. Every participating location (and they are different every year) organizes its own party — from a few friends in a private studio to a performance evening in a museum or gallery. Filliou’s invention of Art’s Birthday is wonderfully absurd and humorous in the typical Fluxus tradition of serious fun. So the global birthday party for art has always tried to be fun while paying homage to Robert Filliou’s dream of The Eternal Network. — Robert Adrian

19 : December : 20086 : March : 2024

place: Prescott, Arizona

Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)

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

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

John Hopkins

https://neoscenes.net/

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

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

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

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

30 : November : 200812 : October : 2024

thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts

Concerning Particular Methodologies

Dialogues, Networks, and Collaboration — Much of my creative practice, research, and indeed, presence is built on the activation of robust and sustained dialogues with a wide range of Others both remote and local. These dialogues form a network. The most powerful situation I can imagine for creative research and production is an open human network. I am keen to engage on the ground with the Australian, Sydney-based, and UTS creative community. I am familiar with the milieu, having been in Sydney for six weeks in 2006 as a visiting artist at COFA, and I very much look forward to being there again. I have an extensive personal/professional network of Antipodal creatives which dates back to the early 1990s that I will be pleased to activate on a more face-to-face basis.

Distributed Performance — My own applied international research in distributed performance and tactical media over the last fifteen years is centered around synchronous live network-based social activities. Engaging a wide range of technical solutions, my work is a direct utilization of amplified digital networks as the locus for creative action. These areas of research experience include a variety of performance-based activities in theater, dance, sonic, and other expressive arts occurring in or augmented by collaborative networked situations. As a self-proclaimed networker, an area of core awareness in my research is the concept of presence — and how that human presence is directly and indirectly affected by any/all technologies that filter and attenuate that presence: how human expression across a network system is precisely formed and informed by the impression of the technologies used.
more “thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts”

24 : November : 200820 : January : 2024

place: Boulder, Colorado - Berlin, Germany

Migrating Academies: Régime

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

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

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

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

31 : October : 200826 : February : 2024

place: Prescott, Arizona

oblivion

month’s ending. All Hallows. images accruing in a form to share — 1996 (of this travelog) will be augmented first. complications with Berlin logistics, may throw off the November trip. and force a cancellation of Transmediale collaboration, hmmm. recalls the cafe9.net debacle in 1999.

end of the month, Friday.

finished with the DFW immersion. Oblivion is a brilliant set of stories, each one containing numerous positions, layers, points-of-view, (what to call the vantage of his voice/eye?). maybe the term channels applies. he has a multi-tasking eye, picking up information not just at the focal point of optics, but instead, immaculate macular generation. he has the recall, along with synthesis. imagination? springing from impression and spreading out through spaces which have not been mapped in that exact way. an example of voice-declaiming-self’s-model-of-cosmos. with a pivotal crux for the entire collection coming on page 326:

‘Who?’ She had ten weeks to live.

Wallace, D.F., 2005. Oblivion: stories, New York: Back Bay.

the deeply buried oblivion of our situation, now. everywhere. whenever. a weepy sad sketch of the human conditions. here, now. whenever. and a stiff finger punched into the chest of gloating cultural superiority. it all falls down.

how to push shaped impulse charges out, through the gate of psyche. and while pushing out, receive direct all the more.

21 : October : 200830 : November : 2015

place: Prescott, Arizona

High School & the Élites

finally done with getting 430 images from my senior year at Gaithersburg High School. I was the Photography Editor for the yearbook, and had originally wanted to get all the images up and running for the 30-year reunion, but never made that deadline. the scanning followed by the retouching work was mind-numbing and has been on my To-Do list for these two years as an escape from more important work, yet it never seemed to get finished until last weekend, after getting a nice email from Renee who had stumbled on the images that I did have up, I was determined to finish the damn project.

when do personal histories become interesting? scandal, documentation of publicly shared events, the historical record, curiosity, obsession. where the volume of material becomes overwhelming. nah. it is the compelling character of the narrative. story-telling. no stories here, only images. and notes rattled off after things seen. (guess what I saw?)

and BTW, George has this nice riff in the New Yorker (that, of course, only Élites read, so, hmmm, how’s that?) But he asks the all-important policy questions (largely ignored as we float down the main stream): Do you know the difference between me and a Hockey Mom who has forgot her lipstick?

8 : October : 200821 : June : 2014

place: Prescott, Arizona

migrations migrating migrants

my swimming pal, Buddy van Kirk passed away recently — I shared a pool, a lane, with him more times than I can count here in Prescott. either at the “Y” or at the college pool. he was there practically everyday to do a leisurely but long swim. he had knee problems and some heavy arthritis, but always kept moving. you will be missed Bud!

the migrating realities book is about to go to the press in Vilnius after a long haul on editing. I like the design although I’m not thrilled about the font face that the designer chose. more on this when the book comes out in hard copy.

stopped by the county elections office to keep on track as an elections volunteer, and now they want me to be a polling trouble-shooter which is a bit daunting (given the contemporary predilection for very third-world election standards here in the US and the dearth of International observers, not sure I want to get caught up in that). not to mention that the county uses a combination of paper and electronic balloting methods. we’ll see. the ladies in the office were quite nice and joked about locking the doors after I had said I was there to volunteer — apparently they never have enough people to help out. technically it’s not a volunteer position either, as one receives for the 0500 — 2100 day around USD 90 for helping out.

driving around, I pass the migrant worker hang-out, the corner Lincoln and Grove Streets, the site around which numerous letters-to-the-editor have addressed both sides of the illegal immigrant issue. apparently some Minutemen have set up a post across the street, although I didn’t see them today. there were plenty of Latino fellows hanging out under the scraggly trees that lead down the dip in the road off Grove to the flood wash. I can imagine the tanking economy makes marginality even more precarious.

11 : July : 200816 : September : 2024

place: Reykjavík, Iceland

busy

day starts with French toast, frisbee a bit later, things that Loki and I share over the history of sporadic presence. cut my hair off last night, making a pile in the middle of the living room floor. clean it up. clean up the kitchen, and other details. so it goes.

make a museum tour as well to the National Museum to see the new Steina Vasulka installation which is monumental and fits the space perfectly. then on to the Kjarval and the Hafnarhusid as I discovered as of February this year they are free to the public. the Martha Schwartz I Hate nature / ‘Aluminati’ installation in the courtyard of the Kjarval is a nice critic of the horrid environmental degradation happening at the hands of Alcoa and corrupt government officials who are selling the landscape to make aluminum smelters and the dams which are necessary to power them.

(00:06:43, stereo audio, 12.9 mb)

also wander down to the harbor to take some photos. observing with irony that the whale-watching ships are docked immediately across the pier from the whaling ships — a fact which no doubt escapes most tourists as the signage is not easily interpretable. anyone from Greenpeace would know. (heh, Simmi tells the joke, my favorite meal is whale meat with green peas…)

managed to get over to Seltjarnarnes to visit with Edda, Stefan’s mum, who now has a flat in the same place that Jón and Helga lived some years back.

not much interesting to write about here. haven’t gotten many of the sound files that I have picked up over the couple weeks online yet. as usual, behind the flowing times. months, years behind on all this — picking up, accreting material observations, when to start the reverse process to dis-engage with this acquisition obsession? rhetorical questions. to scatter into a text of frequent error and mis-apprehension.

24 : April : 200830 : November : 2015

place: Berlin, Germany

sharemtl & share nomad

a performance evening at tmp.lab that Marie-Hélène and Jim set up. I do some ambient sound work, but otherwise focus on the remote situation, monitoring the stream and partners in Chile and Canada. the functionality of the ustream.tv platform (Flash- and browser-based) is quite good with controls on stream quality, multi-point collaboration, a built-in chat channel, archiving, and so on. it would have been a dream for past projects! (all this with the caveat that the stream image has the branded logo of ustream.tv on it, and the company is clearly an eventually-for-profit enterprise. that and while the archival and sharing possibilities are very well-developed, so far I have not determined if it is possible to download stand-alone flash media files from the archive. to play, one needs access to the database — all data including the chat texts reside in their server.

Derek comes by. hinting that the Regime text scared off one of the panel for the Sonic Architectures conference in July, so, I won’t be involved in that event. (thanks for trying, Derek!) and on a reciprocal note, Rasa definitely wants to include it in Spectropia. albeit with references (huh? it’s a speculative essay, but they are seeking peer-review status) and at approximately half the finished length (oh, this is really an impossible challenge to cope with). so, not sure if I want to go through the work on major revisions instead of continuing on with the other chapters. it’s a book chapter, I don’t want to re-write it. but having it published in Spectropia would be nice. they always do really beautiful and innovative design work. so…

29 : March : 200817 : April : 2024

place: Berlin, Germany

Art and Teaching Philosophy

ART

Art, at its social core, is the trace of an engaged and immersive pathway. A pathway that conducts the circulation and exchange of creative human energies as they are attenuated and directed by a vast range of mediative (materialized) carriers. The artist is that person who opens and offers the Self in a humane seeking: to engage in a dialogue of energies with an Other. Finding a proper pathway for those energies—transmitting: simultaneously receiving the expressions of the Other—this is the moving act of creativity. Creativity is the charged flow of energies between and through the Self and the Other over relative spaces and times.

These two proto-definitions are the basis of my art and teaching praxis. more “Art and Teaching Philosophy”

16 : February : 20082 : February : 2016

place: Kiel, Germany

sunshine

April 26 through May 4 is Sun Microsystems’ Worldwide Volunteer Week; a mass mobilization of Sun Microsystems’ employees to volunteer their time. We are seeking project options that utilize the IT knowledge and talents of these employees.

If your organization has an IT related need, please email Dan Zucker at daniel.zucker@sun.com so he can share with Sun’s volunteer community. Because these projects are volunteer, there will be no charge to your organization for these services.

Key parameters of projects include:
-Need to engage 2 or more people
-Project will happen between the dates of April 26 – May 4

17 : January : 200825 : March : 2023

place: Glen Ridge, New Jersey

1,000,045

neoscenes cranks up the sonic streaming for the global 2008 art’s birthday party with friends in Austria, Japan, Germany, Canada, France, Australia, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere. it’s over and done with now. for another year. number 1,000,045. broadcast from the Glen Ridge basement HQ, not really sure I had any audience anyway, another one of those events. I was using the waag.nl QuickTime server in Amsterdam, and for some reason it kept kicking me out every 9:59, so I have 6 chunks of my live improv stream. can’t decide whether just to glue them together into one sixty minute file or keep the pieces as they are. hmmmm. will get that happening later:

(01:11:00, stereo audio, 137 mb)

I’d rather jump into the share.dj projects, though, at least there are other folks out there online to chat with. the arts birthday crowd is too dispersed and anarchic to manage a single meeting place. pity, though, it would have been nice to chat with some of them. maybe next year.

14 : January : 20082 : January : 2020

place: Glen Ridge, New Jersey

coming up!

neoscenes cranks up the sonic streaming for the global 2008 art’s birthday party with friends in Austria, Japan, Germany, Canada, France, Australia, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere.

Thursday, 17 January 2008, live web-mix — this audio stream will be a sonic redux from the neoscenes.net archive of various birthday parties recorded during the last year as well as the travel necessary to get to them.

1800-1900 (GMT) London
10:00-11:00 PM PST (GMT-8) Los Angeles
1:00 – 2:00 PM EST (GMT-5) New York
2000-2100 CET (GMT+2) Helsinki
Friday 0500-0600 (GMT+11) Sydney

–> tune to the live stream — rtsp://qt2.waag.org/birthday.sdp

ART’s BIRTHDAY is an annual event first proposed on January 17th 1963 by French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou. He suggested that 1,000,000 years ago “A man took a dry sponge and dropped it into a bucket full of water. Who that man was is not important. He is dead but art is alive.” Filliou’s ideas have inspired many artists until today.

9 : December : 200722 : November : 2024

place: Brooklyn, New York

share:reboot

feeling pretty lousy with this hanging-on cold, but a chilly and wet trip by bus in to reboot is rewarded with some very nice crossings-of-paths — Keiko (talking share tokyo plans), Elsa (talking Lisboa and roguewaves plans), Anton, Dan; from share.montreal, Jim (is a polar/solar bear, surprise, surprise, yes, indeed, very nice to discover this!) and Marie-Hélène; as was Katherine (another polar bear! great!). head home somewhat early with Dan and Emily to their place in Brooklyn for the night, then back to Jersey the next afternoon.

Emily’s got a nice collection of conscious education books from her studies at Columbia’s Teacher’s College, I take some time to dig into a few of them for some good jolts. she fills me in on her work developing kids’ social networking platforms for the non-profit takingitglobal.org.

see at a distance an undesirable person;
see close at hand a desirable person;
come closer to the undesirable person;
move away from the desirable person;
coming closer and moving apart,
how interesting life is.
— Gensho Ogura

29 : November : 200712 : June : 2024

place: en route Berlin - Köln, Germany

khm

up at 0430, out the door at 0440, on the s-bahn by 0458, at the airport at 0550, on the plane at 0645, into Köln-Bonn at 0800, through Köln-Deutz at 0845, arrive at the Academy by 0900.

breakfast with Zil and a quick tour of the Academy — haven’t been here for years since visiting Nils Roeller back in 1997 to see what the progress was on the Flusser archive among other things.

Zil and I share ideas on teaching, art, creative active, facilitation, corporate be-ing, the desert, and so on. a very nice meeting with the unknown Other. as Miga and Hubertus are developing a collaborative project with Zil, I do hope to jump in with some seminars on collaborative creativity. we’ll see.

23 : October : 20076 : August : 2013

place: Düsternbrooke, Kiel, Germany

wursts

with the hectic schedule of my hosts, I am able to help out by doing errands and babysitting during the day. meeting Frau Pries, Fritz’s day-care mama, who talks to me as though I understand German fluently. not a bad thing, though I still can’t follow things 100% by any stretch. I do learn she has two brothers who lived in the US — one in Boston, the other in San Diego who recently passed away, dropping dead after getting out of a taxi at a hotel in Chicago. and via a Bluetooth-downloaded email on the share list, a completely different channel for information, apparently huge fires in San Diego as well. more information on that will come when DT supposedly will get the internet installed on Thursday here at the house. we’ll see. unstable infrastructures. compared to stable ones? or simply ones that are more or less unstable. shaking foundations.

back to Frau Pries, yes, juggling the needs of six children under two years old. funny to watch the Brownian motion of a roomful of them. well, partially Brownian, partially magnetic attractors and repellers, part complex harmonic motion, part chaos. the emergent aspect being a social system of chance, whatever that is…

midday stroll to the local butcher’s shop. hot lunch with brats & taters for the Polish guys, Peter, Jan, and Andre, who are doing all the heavy finishing work on the new house. this along with a case of beer every other day, and a bottle of whiskey on Saturdays.

18 : October : 200711 : May : 2014

place: en route Bremen - Kiel, Germany

looking down

and then, first looking down, ahmmm, then looking back. Bremen finished, passing away on the train, now the work of helping Christian and Steffi with this big move. tough situation. when energy expressions rely on stability and known situations, up comes more-or-less chaos. how to optimize assistance?

on an ICE train, always a wonder how a country manages to field such functional chunks of technology. how great it would be in the US with such a system. what would it really cost? given that there was such an infrastructure at one time, that the right-of-ways are at least partially in place still. but the will of people to invest in de-privatized impulses is weak at best. not understanding that privatization brings a chaos of fragmented infrastructures which, driven by a profit/shareholder motive, rarely invest in long-term improvements (to benefit the people who they ‘serve’). so the US has an infrastructure which crumbles — especially now with the constant drain of power from this stupid war. which no-one except the psychologically unbalanced and stupid president, his feckless handlers, and his clueless followers want. the result is a morally and fiscally impoverished nation.

17 : October : 200722 : November : 2024

place: Bremen, Germany

dogs

okay, how does this guy in Bremen manage to sell these things so cheap? Martin says that the wursts are made locally, too. as we make a short tour of downtown on share-bremen night. Jürgen is sick. but we see some interesting art work.

The truth is that there is not enough of the right kind of freedom, the fundamental freedom to choose to be free or not to be free, according to one’s preference …. Thus I demand, for each and every member of human society, freedom of association according to inclination and of activity according to aptitude. In other words, the absolute right to choose the political surroundings in which to live, and to ask for nothing else. — Paul Emile de Puydt

11 : October : 200714 : November : 2015

place: Bremen, Germany

Uni-see

so it goes. pedagogic extravagances, personal liberties, dialogue, Light, revolution, action. and so on…

questions arising from the second round of dialogue pairs yesterday:

Why are you looking for a unified theory?

What is the significance of your octagonal earring (assuming it’s not just an accessory)?

How can the energy affect the technical model — for example, social networks in the internet?

Will we try to bring the course to a technical level in the meaning of morality or communications?

How can the energy in a field influence all points in it simultaneously — wouldn’t there be a problem with time?

How do expectations influence ourselves / our lives / our encounters with other human beings?

What if everyone shared John’s worldview, would that solve all (any?) of our problems?

If death is a catastrophe, is birth also?

Was this a day of crisis because there were different points of view in the room, or has that been a step forward?

Who can or should alter the permissions for one system to drain the energy of an other one to get stronger — without giving it back — in an unfair way: The elements of the system being drained or the elements of the unfair system?

Is there a lack of energy (flow) between the Self & the Other through digital communications?

Since we try to create a balance between “flow” and “block” in order to reach a good level, could we integrate “chaos” in this dialogue? What would the influence of chaos be?

24 : September : 200722 : November : 2024

place: Brooklyn, New York

urban recall

overnight at Eric and Sylvia’s (aka Asteria) place

in Brooklyn after that nice share.dj evening at reboot in the City.

meet Trebor for lunch and coffee in Park Slope. hanging in a coffee house, cyber cafe. where hardly anyone is talking. this is the social venue of the time. wouldn’t have been this way five years, ten, twenty years ago. with Bob Marley playing non-stop on the sound system. and photographic portraits of old gypsy women on the walls. the guy across from me, in the cluster of couches full of typers gets up and leaves, leaving an ipod or iphone behind. a gal next to him in an overstuffed smoking chair gets up and runs after him. no one else looks up at the ripple fluttering of off energy. I smile at her when she returns to her seat and her computer. no more contact.

and the urban vibrato in the space from ankle to nose. along with hard pavement. I walked two miles from Eric’s down to Trebor’s. it always surprises me, the condition of the general infrastructure of the city. would it be better if there wasn’t a war going on?

23 : September : 200729 : January : 2024

place: Manhattan, New York

On the way in, a curious Indian national promotion in Bryant Park. A fashion show in a miniature Taj Mahal.

And finally met dear Keiko, hang for the evening, some nice performances. Do a little ambient mixing in later. Head home with Eric after he graciously offered a place to crash so that I didn’t have to negotiate the train to Jersey…

And am working on a redux audio of the evening.

17 : May : 200711 : October : 2024

place: Prescott, Arizona

Simon’s Bar Mitzvah

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”

28 : April : 200730 : November : 2015

place: Livermore, California

share.nomad

as the share-nomad node, participate remotely at the conference at MIT MiT5: creativity, ownership, and collaboration in the digital age in Boston with share people, as share.nomad node. Martin was there from Bremen along with quite a few other nodes being represented.

1 : March : 200722 : November : 2024

place: en route Bremen - Kiel, Germany

share:bremen

So, the market spirals down. while I travel. back to Kiel today, after a very late night at Martin’s where Anja teaches me:

Kopf hoch auch wenn der Hals dreckig ist.

(something like — keep your chin up when things are tough…)

The train is canceled, apparently there is a derailing between Bremen and Hamburg. After a wait in the Bremen Hauptbahnhof, catch a slow train to bus to slow train to Hamburg. Then on to Kiel in a train car packed full of 10-year-olds. Got some choice audio of that. Soon to be online, but not now, too many bush fires to put out.

(00:05:00, stereo audio, 10.3 mb)

(00:06:01, stereo audio, 12.5 mb)

And so, last night was also a share:bremen meeting with Jan, Jürgen, Thomas, and Martin. Stefan from my Uni-Bremen workshops manages to drop in for a visit as well. We discuss the possibilities and histories of share:bremen, thinking ahead with workshop plans, and other actions.

27 : February : 200722 : November : 2024

place: Bremen, Germany

amazon bonanza

crossing another path with sharedj people — Martin and Jürgen of the Bremen crew. turns out Jürgen participated in difusion 2002 using iVisit — he was doing some crazy things with the video image he was sending, and I remember that the students were really intrigued with his mysterious presence…

but the first time in a smoky German bar is too much for me. horrible environment. the Germans are on the verge of passing a law to cut off smoking in public places as have other European states have already passed — Norway, Ireland, Italy, France. it’s about time. head back to Frieder & Susi’s place.

wow, and I made all of $0.69 on Amazon referrals last month from my reading list of books and other media that has crossed my radar lately. I can retire now.

earlier, breakfast at Kuku, and a stop by the Kunsthalle, Frieder gets me in free (as Icelandic/Finnish artist union member) to look at the work of Annamaria and Marzio Sala. interesting, but not compelling. one video installation is absolutely juvenile and would not stand in a bachelors-level class. strange. hanging out in the permanent John Cage sonic installation work Essay.

4 : February : 200712 : June : 2024

place: en route San Francisco, California - Vancouver, Canada - London, England

Inuit dreams

Joe Nasogaluak of Tuktoyaktuk created this amazing piece (2 meters wide!) carved from a Bowhead whale skull in 1992. it’s a work about Sedna, an Inuit sea goddess who rules over the Adlivun, the Inuit underworld. I note that Joe and I are the same age. And I did once get to Tuktoyaktuk for that total solar eclipse back in 1972.

on the road. by the time I post this I’ll be in London, safely ensconced at Joanna’s place. only the mediation of hours in hard-shaped public spaces lies ahead. and indeed, the system seems ever so fragile. needing constant invigoration, construction, maintenance. the 767 scheduled to take me from Vancouver to London breaks down. forcing an ancient 747 recently arrived from Toronto to be pressed into service for the long haul. somehow the seat I had selected online got translated from a aisle one to a window. despite there being some 1/3-full three-across rows, I just stayed where I was. too tired to change after the 4-hour mind-numbing delay. (the sound of) public null-spaces. grind the senses to a fine dust, leave them, particulate, ready to be disbursed by a Light breeze.

Canada. last time I was in Canada was for ISEA 1996 in Mon’real where I shared a room with Leslee and a couple other folks, or vaguely recall something like that. at least it was the same hotel. ever since going to the Calgary Stampede back in 1974 on the way to Alaska along the Al-Can Highway, and some summer camping trips with Aunt Mary to the Maritimes and PEI, Canada has always had special status in my psyche. despite the funny way of talking! a niece who is homesteading there in BC now, too. O Canada! eh?

30 : January : 200722 : January : 2024

place: Livermore, California

Share Transmediale

(01:03:15, stereo audio, 122 mb)

the share event at Club Transmediale goes relatively smoothly. some glitches, but overall seems pretty good from the vantage point of the guest bedroom in Livermore. Montreal and Bremen and I form the remote triad, while a crew of share folks from New York, Wiesbaden, Switzerland, and Montreal staged the live and seemingly wild event on the ground in Berlin.

26 : January : 200722 : November : 2024

place: San Diego, California

share San Diego

Gary and I head out towards Balboa Park, but don’t actually make it. I wanted to get online for a couple hours of work, so he takes me to a cybercafe in North Park where the PowerBook exhibits it’s intransigent side — something that comes up about 2% of the time when connecting to a wifi node — it can see the node, says it’s connected, but refuses to actually establish a viable connection. grrrrr. the usual spate of re-starts, config changes, etc, to no avail. Gary puts up with my whining, then calls an acquaintance nearby, Christian Michaels, a professional photographer who happened to have a wifi network at his studio. we head south on Ray Street, a funky neighborhood to the beautiful studio built in a former sign-manufacturers space. he’s got a huge video projector with a 25×25-foot projection area at one end of the main studio. as we chat, turns out that he is hosting a share event in the evening! we have a good laugh that I am the share-nomad node. synchronicity! have lunch at a taqueria around the corner, and head back to spend the afternoon with Andrea and Ryan. then Gary comes by to fetch me for the evening happening. end up meeting Morgan Sully of share-San Diego and others. there is a screening of Metropolis, and I do a short VDMX improv. nice!