Sitting at a talk/discussion “Open Source Drives Industry” by Stormy Peters. Technology is (apparently) still the answer. The big dreams of machines to save the world, pushing the envelope of technology. OLPC surfaces. Overall communication in the room seems hindered somehow. The discussion seems . . . opaque. Is this about an insider/outsider issue (partially, with inside language being tossed around) but with an unclear premise. Does Open Source actually drive Industry? What industry does it drive? What is driving? Who is driving? What kind of car? An open source car? Where is it being driven? Is there parking? It was suggested that 3D printing was also a panacea for something. Questions from the audience were opaque. Sentences with words in them that did not make sense, etc.
bricolabs @ pixelache
Helping Felipe, Jerneja, Bronac and other bricos get the following text out for our Pixelache Festival presence — still not sure that I can make it, logistically, between cost and timing: it will be a nice conclave of old and new friends, though, and a good landing back in Europe.
Bricolabs (https://bricolabs.net) is a fluid network created in 2006 to investigate — from a critical and creative perspective — the loop of free/libre/open content, software and hardware for community applications. Bricolabs promotes open debate and critical making on such themes, between people with diverse backgrounds, in areas of expertise from Latin America, Europe, Asia and North America. Special attention is given to affective networking as a shared value.
Responding in a collaborative fashion to the call to reflect on the theme “Facing North – Facing South,” Bricolabs is currently planning, organising and developing part of the Pixelache Helsinki 2013 programme. Bricolabs wants to bring a multilayer perspective to trans-local networking, engaging the participants of Pixelache 2013 in new ways of being as well as new ways of doing things together. Bricolabs proposes a critical perspective on the usual north/south dichotomy, interested and rooted in deep resonant networks where borders are seldom taken into account. This is as true for geographic boundaries as it is for disciplinary ones – recently Bricolabs members have turned their attention to anti-disciplinary collaboration as an escape from the common traps of western/northern paradigms of development.
The Bricolabs programme will include live remote sessions with a number of collaborative groups sharing their perspectives from different parts of the world, as well as an exhibition articulating models of open source culture, translocality, DIWO, and subjective infrastructures. Several practical workshops will be conducted along these same lines. The festival will give Bricolabs members a rare face-to-face opportunity to meet and organise working sessions for particular collaborative projects. Bricolabs will also be facilitating discussions and panels, portraying collective efforts that take place across diverse practices engaging the work of artists, developers, thinkers – thus redefining the geophysical and virtual ecologies of their practices, as well as methodologies in the context of open source models and the theme of the festival.
stasis, spectacle and speed? unh-unh!
I just ran across this excerpt from Geert’s first internet-oriented book—way back in 2003—in the chapter on “tactical education” entitled “The Battle over New Media Art Education.” This is a section of that chapter titled Neoscenes Pedagogy:
The Digital Bauhaus concept may be a fata morgana amidst a never-ending institutional nightmare. The new-media subject appears at the end of a long global crisis in the education industry. Decades of constant restructuring, declining standards and budget cuts have led to an overall decline of the .edu sector. There are debates not only about fees, cutbacks in staff and privatization but also about the role of the teacher. For a long time the classic top-down knowledge delivery methods of the classroom situation have been under fire. In a response to the education crisis, the American-Scandinavian John Hopkins calls for a cultural shift towards alternative pedagogies. His pedagogy, close to that of Paolo Freire, is based on a combination of face-to-face and networked communication, keeping up a “flow of energies from node to node.” Hopkins, who calls himself an “autonomous teaching agent,” has roamed between Northern European universities and new-media initiatives and currently teaches in Boulder, Colorado. His spiritual-scientific worldview might not match mine, but he is certainly my favorite when it comes to a radical education approach. Hopkins prefers the person-to-person as a “tactical” expression of networking, avoiding “centralized media and PR-related activities wherever possible.” Hopkins’ “neoscenes” networks are “a vehicle for learning, creating and sharing that does not seek stasis, spectacle and speed.”
In a few instances, Hopkins’ “distributed Socratic teaching strategy” has culminated in 24-hour techno parties with a big online component to make room for remote participation and exchange. The challenge with the live remix streams was to find out collectively “how exactly to facilitate autonomy and spontaneity.” For Hopkins teaching is a “life practice,” an action that embodies “art as a way-of-doing.” He calls his style “verbose and densely grown (not necessarily meaningful either ;-). but I do try to say what I am thinking and practicing … ” Hopkins tries not to make a distinction between learning, teaching and being taught. “It is critical that I myself am transformed by the entire engaged experience.” As a visiting artist, and usually not a member of the “local academic politburo,” Hopkins can build up personal connections within a local structure, free to “catalyze a flexible response that is immediately relevant,” while maintaining a creative integrity that is based in praxis.
. . .
John Hopkins: “I start my workshops with a sketching of some absolute fundamentals of human presence and being in the phenomenal world. This beginning point immediately becomes a source of deep crisis for some students precisely because they are expecting the vocational top-down educational experience of learning a specific software platform and making traditional artifacts.” John finds people who focus on software platforms “incredibly boring. It’s like amateur photo-club members comparing the length of their telephoto lenses or having conversations about national sports. It’s a code system for communication that is often mindless and banal. While at some level, my students are forced to confront the digital device. I encourage them to be aware of how they are interacting with the machine, what is comfortable and what is not.”
. . .
John Hopkins compares Scandinavia and the USA, places he knows well. “Because of a well-funded cultural industry sector in Scandinavia, artists who are potential teachers are not forced into teaching as happens in the US. This has kept the stagnation of the tenure-track system, something that dogs US higher education, out of the way. In the US, artists who have any desire to live by working in some way in their medium are more often than not forced into academia because there is no other social context for them. They may or may not be teachers in any sense. There tend to be more permeable and productive interchanges between the ‘art world’ and ‘academia’ in Scandinavia and northern Europe, realized by cycling a larger number of idiosyncratic individual teacher/artists into contact with students.” Isolated campus life. slow and complicated bureaucracies, and the politically correct atmosphere at US universities are not ideal circumstances for a hybrid “trans-disciplinary” program to thrive. However, the campus setup does help to reduce distractions, once students know what they want and the resources are in place.
Lovink, G., 2003. My First Recession, Rotterdam, NL: V2-NAi Publishers.
feudal allegiance
In the old days, traditional computer security centered around users. However, Bruce Schneier writes that now some of us have pledged our allegiance to Google (using Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Android phones) while others have pledged allegiance to Apple (using Macintosh laptops, iPhones, iPads; and letting iCloud automatically synchronize and back up everything) while others of us let Microsoft do it all. ‘These vendors are becoming our feudal lords, and we are becoming their vassals. We might refuse to pledge allegiance to all of them — or to a particular one we don’t like. Or we can spread our allegiance around. But either way, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to not pledge allegiance to at least one of them.’ Classical medieval feudalism depended on overlapping, complex, hierarchical relationships. Today we users must trust the security of these hardware manufacturers, software vendors, and cloud providers and we choose to do it because of the convenience, redundancy, automation, and shareability. ‘In this new world of computing, we give up a certain amount of control, and in exchange we trust that our lords will both treat us well and protect us from harm (PDF). Not only will our software be continually updated with the newest and coolest functionality, but we trust it will happen without our being overtaxed by fees and required upgrades.’ In this system, we have no control over the security provided by our feudal lords. Like everything else in security, it’s a trade-off. We need to balance that trade-off. ‘In Europe, it was the rise of the centralized state and the rule of law that undermined the ad hoc feudal system; it provided more security and stability for both lords and vassals. But these days, government has largely abdicated its role in cyberspace, and the result is a return to the feudal relationships of yore,’ concludes Schneier, adding that perhaps it’s time for government to create the regulatory environments that protect us vassals. ‘Otherwise, we really are just serfs.’ — Hugh Pickens
M of IT – Day 21 – 07 November
week 11:
07 november – day 21 – (Group 7 Presentation: Open Source & FLOSS – Scott, Katie, & Mallorie / Group 12 Respondents – Danny, Sam, & Maddie)
link to collective notes
assignment: reading to be FINISHED for today:
Open Source vs Proprietary Software
Richard Stallman on free software
What is Open Source?
assignment: on your blog platform, generate at least 3 questions for the readings.
asides (extra credit – 3-400 word blog entry on one of these):
Google Street Artist: Doug Rickard
Fears for civil liberties as Apple patents technology that could remotely disable protesters’ smartphones
Xbox team’s ‘consumer detector’ would dis-Kinect freeloading TV viewers
Trapped to Reveal – On webcam mediated communication and collaboration
Stanza (netart)
conversation
a long conversation with Anthony this evening. always stimulating coverage of the non-typical meta-structures of social and individual existence.
the thought comes up, in teaching — most recently the “Multi-platform Story-telling” course that I was involved with this past semester at La Trobe — how seldom the holistic social meta-structure of the grouping of students (and teachers!) is considered in the facilitation of a learning trajectory. this includes the cumulative totality of all relations (power and otherwise!) that occur within the grouping. I call this space the continuum-of-relation and define it as the total accumulated network of relations, expressed as activated exchanges of energy, as Dialogues, that have occurred, are occurring, and will occur between members of the species. Based on the assumption that we are in a holistic and continuous universe, it is possible to extend the definition to include the set of energy relations that humans have with the detailed and greater cosmos around them, and indeed, this is an important aspect to consider, but it is easier to limit the scope to a specific subset comprising relations between all humans. There are infinite sub-sets of relation that may be delineated, one set being those which arise in the process of learning facilitation. much attention is paid to syllabi, curricula, classroom technologies, and wide-scaled social ‘relevance’ of education systems while very little is paid to the immediate and long-term embodied needs for a recognition of presence of all the humans involved in the actual learning process. and especially the needs for deep human encounter and connection. is it such that this university, as with most others, is merely reflecting a wider scale of civil social decay when those crucial relations and their attendant qualities are simply ignored in the stead of assessment protocols, schedules, cash-for-services, and the general corporatization of education. more “conversation”
Freedom in the Cloud
Freedom in the Cloud: Software Freedom, Privacy and Security for Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing
Absolutely brilliant talk by Eben Moglen — Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia University, and founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center — at an Internet Society – New York Chapter event back in February of this year.
In these two videos he presents an image of what exactly happened in terms of the internet infrastructure, completely outside the purview of political or wide social awareness which presents extreme danger to the fundamentals of our civil society. Explicit, clear, concise insights into the situation presented by corporate ‘log aggregators’ like Google and Facebook as well as the issues underlying how they threaten YOUR freedom.
CMAI office
move over to the Bon Marche Bldg. into the CMAI office, it’s free for now, so I take over a corner of it. aside from the air conditioning which cycles between +18 and +30 C on a fifteen-minute basis, it’s quite okay. good to have a fast iMac in addition to my now-ancient pre-Intel G5 PowerBooks. they always feel dogged by the ten or so chunks of software I have open at any one time. Dreamweaver, Firefox with Zotero, iView Media Pro, Now-Up-To-Date, Thunderbird, BBEdit, Skype, OmniOutliner, iTunes, Photoshop, Acrobat, Terminal, SoundTrack, Peak, NetToolbox, Activity Monitor, and so on. work.
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.
Theorizing Communication
Hunting in the communications area of social research, doing a basic review of various theories of communications to focus in on what might be a useful jumping-off point. I’ll need one that is anchored, but also with some degrees of freedom to map the important new characteristics of my broader definition of dialogue. Craig and Muller’s survey of the field of communication theories (seven by their count) is a helpful text, allowing me to zoom into the phenomenological area of inquiry (anchored by Buber and people influenced by his committed I-Thou dialogical approach). More on that shortly. I’ve got 15 books out from the library already, and have made more than 200 entries in Zotero… yikes, how to cope with all that material! Still generating a internal process methodology that brings at least some impression of progress on a daily basis.
Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions, Craig, Robert T. (Editor), Muller, Heidi L. (Editor), Sage Publications, Inc; 1st edition (April 5, 2007) ISBN-10 1412952379
It’s a pity that I didn’t previously know this book and that the editors were at CU-Boulder in the Communications Department. That would have been a nice coincidence, and perhaps if I get up there sometime in the long-term, I’ll drop them a line.
The most daunting challenge is the difficulty of mind-mapping all the disparate sources. I’m thinking a big wall with sticky notes might be good, and translate that over to hyper-linking within this WordPress armature. The sticky-notes technique has served me well in workshops situations. Howard has been using Adam Somlai-Fisher’s prezi mind-map software (think Minority Report data-space interface), but I find it too clunky. In theory that would be an excellent way to map and interface with the substantial data-cloud that will eventually accrete. But on this old G4 PB running Firefox, the Java scripting seems to dog the whole machine, consuming the CPU and rendering the machine worth-less. One would be better off with a huge wall-sized touch-screen to play with. So, sticky-notes are fine.
keywording, filing
such a massive issue in a trans-disciplinary space. listing everything or nothing or SIPs (Statistically Improbable Phrases). maybe the SIPs would be the best phenomena, as it is a tangible mapping of non-standard word usage … mapping out new conceptual spaces. kind of like those emails from a few years back, spewed out by random text generators (or a thousand drunken monkeys reading the confetti of paper-shredded copies of Naked Lunch and pausing at spontaneously proscribed intervals to jot notes on where precisely those confetti-signs sent their proto-humanoid minds.
Ich bin mit meinem Dasein zufrieden(?)
oder
Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. — Samuel Butler
heavy shuffling through the digital archive and web links to assemble something meaningful via zotero. heavy work, reading reading reading. some semi-classics to remind, and enjoy the luxury of reading to gain or revivify knowledge. Kittler, Grammaphone, Film, Typewriter; Latour, Reassembling the Social; Vygotsky, Thought and Language; McLuhan, Understanding Media, along with reviewing the already substantial library/bibliography assembled on my hard drive from the last 20 years of info-filtering in the media-sphere. dragging copies of all that into Zotero, slowly, along with hundreds of bookmarked sources, and then the keywording begins, starting the cycle. plenty of SIPs there.
such a massive issue in a trans-disciplinary space, etc…
Zotero, an open-source project, by-the-way, a victor today when a Circuit Court judge throws out a law-suit coming from Thomson-Reuters, makers of EndNote, the monopoly research/thesis writing/citation tool out there in academia.
thesis proposal :: Background
Background for Research
While individual human presence in this world has fundamental repercussions on be-ing, it is the ever-present and synergistic exchange between humans — forming what I call a “continuum of relation” — that governs much of life. This energetic field of human relation is sometimes fraught with difficulties and complications in spite of the rich and necessary dynamic it brings to life. Technology, as a ubiquitous factor in mediating human relation, often dominates while presented as providing the only opportunity for mediated connection and interaction between humans.
Presence, as apprehended by the Other, circumscribes a range of sensory inputs that require energy (from the Self) to stimulate and drive. The efficacy and sustainability of human connection builds on the very real and tangible transmissions and receptions of energy between the Self and the Other. An interconnected plurality of dialectic human relation may be described as a network. These networks, made up of a web of Self-Other connections form the base fabric of the continuum of relation. Technology appears in these networks as the mediating pathway that is the carrier of energy from node to node, person to person. Technological systems also appear to apply absolute restraints on and attenuation of the idiosyncratic flows inherent in that continuum of relation. The discrete objects that populate the (technological) landscape of the continuum of relation and that modulate the character of communications are literally artifacts of a materialist point of view. A primary assumption in my research is that a materialist or mechanistic view of the world no longer suffices to adequately circumscribe the phenomena occurring within the continuum of relation. more “thesis proposal :: Background”
dkfrf review
Rinus makes some nice notes on the Amurikan evening at das kleine field recording festival last week in Kreuzberg.
Rinus is one of those intelligent and grounded souls who facilitate events that are the polar opposite of pretentious. informal, humane, and best, they include a collection of found artists. artists who are connected by their desire to connect with others in an open way. my impression of the evening of performances was largely the comfort with which it proceeded. for example, I had not intended doing a visual set, thinking conservatively it was about field recording. but when Brandon got the video-projector set up, I thought, yeah, why not. so I started the evening with a slowly-building barrage. guilty, sure, of a phat mix. Rinus noted that it divided the crowd — it’s that polarizing influence that I seem to have. hmmm. it’s partly the software, got to explore how to slow it down for a more meditative mix. density. (going back to the thoughts about levity and density a few weeks ago). Brandon’s set was a perfect counterpoint to mine with the levity and Light of his life.
more “dkfrf review”
Steve Cisler 1942 – 2008
then get the news that Steve Cisler passed away yesterday. what a bummer. I always read his postings on nettime and a few other lists. Paul Jones has a detailed outline of some of Steve’s many activities. as an update, another blog came online for condolences: https://communitynetworking2008.wordpress.com/.
prepping for the performance tomorrow night. never feeling ready with only half my normal equipment. got the files, but no midi/usb controller nor keyboard. and not even the right software. will be winging it. and who knows about the audience. but whatever the case, Said gives one pathway!
Least of all should an intellectual be there to make his/her audience feel good: the whole point is to be embarrassing, contrary, even unpleasant. — Edward Said
Bucky
waiting for the new(used) PowerBook to arrive to begin the laborious process of rolling the practice-base from the lame machine. crossed fingers for easy roll-over of software, as I have exactly none of my original install disks with me. I imagine problems, and might be forced to try a more extreme method of swapping hard drives which theoretically will work, but is sure to run into some kind of problem on the way.
The kinetic intercomplementarity of the finite Universe requires that what disassociates here must associate there. High-pressure atmosphere at one point is balanced by low-pressure elsewhere. The stars are all radiantly dissipating energy. The Earth is a celestial center wherein energies from the stars are being collected and buried ever more deeply. When after vast millions of years, enough energy has been impounded aboard our spherical space vehicle Earth — then it will become a radiant star, as the discard of other burnt-out and dissipated stars are concurrently aggregate elsewhere — some trillions of years again to become a star. No factor operative aboard our planet is so effective in aggregating, reorganizing, concentrating, and refining the disorderly resource receipts as is the human mind. — R. Bucky Fuller
okay, I kind of get it, but Earth, Inc. is pretty obscure not least because of the convoluted language Fuller uses — endless sentences of conjunction and adjectival amplification. but no references, I like that — evidence of original thinking (or un-cited plagiarism…). poems, fragments of ideas, what not. it can be done, but what impact did/does this text have on The Whole Earth?
Sarah Chung
former student Sarah lets me reprint this article she wrote recently about her creative practice:
Sarah H. Chung :: https://www.myspace.com/sarahhdot
I am an experimental multimedia artist, a student, and a teacher based in Denver, Colorado, USA. My latest artistic pursuits are a combination of various mediums including still image, video, sound, sculpture, light, and performance. Most recently I have been collaborating with another female artist, Heidi Higginbottom, to choreograph audio/visual performances using found objects, homemade instruments, contact microphones, and film loops. We make homemade contact microphones out of easily attainable and affordable materials and use them to amplify the sound of the movement of objects. We have used objects ranging from dishware, tile, typewriters, music boxes, sewing machines, thumb pianos, toys, water, or any curious object we can get our hands on. Our intentions are not to make melodic pieces of “music,” but to isolate and arrange pure commonplace sounds that would normally be easily lost in the proceedings of everyday life. While these objects may be ordinary, they refer to a vast web of associations and marked memories. By arranging them, we create a new resonance in the relationships the objects and symbols have with one another. These relationships are meant to be memory cues that can be triggered by sensory experience. We are in the process of experimenting with different technologies and digital software to incorporating projections, audio delay, editing and looping.
As a studio art major I was largely focused on traditional forms of art such as painting, drawing, and photography. It was about six years ago that I began to pay more attention to the intricate and beguiling aspects of the digital art culture. I was introduced to it from digital art courses being taught by visiting professor, John Hopkins, who is a working artist and has taught and traveled internationally. Projects included collecting and arranging self-generated media and media filtered from outside sources. These included field recordings, videos, still images, and lines of text. I had not dealt with this kind of medium prior to this, so I approached it the same as I would painting and 35mm photography. While the navigation of new software in a limited time span was challenging, the results of the projects left me very intrigued and curious about digital culture. I believe that the success of these projects were due to the non-linear process of collecting media without a finished product as motivation. Filtering media (books, internet, video, music, sound clips, etc.) provides an intuitive process for choosing content. It becomes a dialogue that interacts with an individuals sensibilities and social views. Whether I am drawn to content or pure aesthetic, some aspect of the media strikes me, and I collect it.
With human interaction, technology can be used as a tool to express emotion and the individualized perspectives of human experience. Technology brings with it an efficiency that adds new time-lines within our culture. Ubiquitous media screens flash loaded images and sounds that are intended to influence feelings and opinions about products, services, and perspectives in government. These messages compete with each other and have conditioned us to receive information at an exponentially increasing rate. In a society saturated with advertising, I feel a responsibility to express and tap into more emotive, internalized feelings and memories, and to offer a situation for slowing down. This desire is what caused me to seek out the tools and skills that could connect me with the vast and accessible network I was experiencing.
I believe it is of utmost importance for individuals to be informed about technologies so that they may exercise basic democratic principles. I had been intimidated by technology before, but I felt that placing myself outside of the existence of it is like surrendering my own rights. Technology is propelled by human curiosity, but is often used as a system of control. History is constantly redefined based on documentation. Dominant historical theories are based on those with the power to document and expose others to their material. It is crucial to actively participate in the documentation process of our own history in process.
Links: (check them out!!)
https://www.neoscenes.net
https://home.earthlink.net/~erinys/contactmic.html
https://www.pierrebastien.com/
https://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/
https://www.mutek.org/
https://www.haamu.com/launau
https://www.colleenplays.org/
https://www.skoltzkolgen.com/
MacWorld
well, what about that? venturing into San Fran for one of those talked-about media events, though I missed Steve Jobs by three days with the hyped unveiling of the iPhone. I did see the worshipful milling about the two glass cases with the two ‘working’ models. hard to engage with the masses of people around. too much time in the boonies! did run into a somewhat familiar face — Steve Bisque of Bisque Software — his father was a prof of mine at CSM, and Steve is a Geophysics grad from CSM, graduating a year after me. his company makes a range of amateur and professional astronomical software. otherwise, well. lotsa toys, things to possibly buy. data security solutions and iPod cases are everywhere. a scattering of Chinese companies have stiff staff manning empty booths, compared to the chaotic and relaxed professional Amurikan consumer and consumee. ID tags are scan-able at every booth with all the data that was required for registration to get into the show. perfect marketing. scan your card to enter in a drawing for a Nano. scan it for propaganda to arrive in the email box later. so it goes. try to buy a discounted replacement battery for my G4 PB, but they are all out. and no microphone is available for my iPod. too old. have to buy a new iPod and then I can get a CD-quality stereo recording mike. sheesh. always something more to buy! never-ending.
bed in the Marble Mountains
back up a familiar wash in the Marble Mountains, close to another Wilderness-designated area. arriving at dusk after an intermittent drive across the Sonoran desert from Prescott. conversations range over media, culture, education, social systems, software, teaching, art, and, uh, what else? weather, geology.
full-moon hiking up the wash into a zone of chaotic conglomerates, alluvium, diorites, granites, limestones.
The GenerativeCollager
As a test-review for furtherfield neoscenes reviews a random online project by Sandra Crisp:
Hmmmm. Recalling a review I did some years back for kunstnet in Oslo, it seemed interesting to pretend for a moment I was a novice user who had just received a URL of interest from a good friend who’s critical opinion I trusted.
A novice user perhaps wouldn’t be using FireFox on a Mac, that’s clear. More likely Safari. When I attempt to go to the project from the introduction page, as the Java applet loads, waiting, waiting, until finally I get an error window with the following text:
WORKING VARIABLES NEEDED FUNCTIONS ***************************************************
// SET UP ALL THE VARIABLES FOR THE IMAGE BLISTERING void setup() { // CREATE THE TIMERS AND IMAGE COLLAGERS size(WIDTH,HEIGHT); t = new Texter(width,height); timer = new Timer(500); collager = new Collager(); collageCount = new Counter(3); // <- CHANGE IMAGES PER TIMER COUNT //load a sound and loop it soundA = loadSound(“SURSHLOOP.Wav”); //this loads the sound soundA.Loop(); …Snip… Timer.SetTarget(floor(random(500,1500))); // <- CHANGE IMAGE DROP TIME } // TELL THE COLLAGER TO PUT A RANDOM PICTURE ON THE SCREEN collager.Paint(); // MAKE IT ALL NICE AND SMOOTH smooth(); } loadPixels(); performDblBuff(dblBuff, pixels); updatePixels(); t.Paint(); //updatePixels(); } / ******************************************************
Somehow I want to add the e.E.Cummings text:
this is the way the world ends,
this is the way the world ends,
this is the way the world ends,
not with a bang, but with a whimper. more “The GenerativeCollager”
The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks
A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor’s note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 that set life on another trajectory.]
1.0 Statement of Problem
1.1 Introductory note
Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. more “The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks”
exploring assumptions
how does the assumption of constant 110 volt ac (220 volts in Europe) electricity supply to a connected device bear on the efficiency of the engineering design process? this is an issue driven not by absolute power/energy consumption, but by the economics of the same. a subtle difference, but something to look at in more detail. the drive for engineering optimization has also been strapped into the Market. although there are hints that this process is built into engineering as a social construct. inseparable from economics.
The effectiveness of the leakage reduction depends on how precisely the behavior of cache line can be tracked. While turning off a cache line later than the last use can waste energy consumption, prematurely turning off a cache line can incur energy/performance penalties when it needs to be accessed. Thus, deciding when to turn off a cache line is very important. In this work, we utilize the knowledge about the state of an object in its life span to direct the turning off cache lines. In particular, we identify different states in the lifetime of an object, when it is created, last-used, becomes garbage, and is collected by the garbage collector. It must be observed that the cache lines containing only objects beyond their last use waste leakage energy. Our analysis in this paper reveals that this wasted leakage energy contributes to a significant portion of data cache energy consumption. (G. Chen, et al, 2003)
note, these terms used in systems engineering — asset, communication, coordination, disaster, economics, engineering, feedback, management, methods, organization, planning, policy, project, protection, recovery, responsibility, schedule, technique — are adequately defined by Webster. the rest of the terms in the Certified Software Development Professional Examination specs glossary, have discipline-specific meanings: the exclusivity of language in the priesthoods…
netart 2004 – Ping Melody
The netart 2004 exhibition is opening tomorrow, well, today, as Tokyo is ahead of Arizona. Here’s the blurb posted as my curatorial commentary:
where is netart?
When invited to join this year’s netart curatorial crew, I was somewhat skeptical that such an exhibition—with the attendant baggage of dusty artifact carried by the traditional Art World—would be a satisfying way to spend life-limited time when there are always other things to be done. That and the continuous nomadic movement that underlies my participation like a slippery mat, allowing only sporadic concentration of my remote presence hunting for and looking at network-based art and actually thinking about it.
However, collective curation with people who I knew were sensitive to the contingencies of remote collaboration and very aware of the limited understanding that the Art World has regarding net art makes the project interesting. So what then? Do I trawl the now-vast network for something brightly shining or sounding attractive? Eye candies? A hopeless task. The only thing to do was to sift the daily flow of content, during interstitial times when local presence was not demanded—the information flow personally customized by the networker to form a vital link with the remote macro-network—while keeping the overall blast of data at a comprehensible level. Not always possible: it’s getting ever more difficult with each spam-filled day. Especially given that the networker is not fond of reductionist activities which concentrate attention on particular nodes.
more “netart 2004 – Ping Melody”
ram5 – day 3
quick series of presentations covering software, performative situations, and … in the morning. non-keywords: collective and playful, revealing, (bob him say, “they materialize their every wish. everywhere is war.”), (the possibility for personal data/info re-vealing confused with an open-ness for change as stimulated by the Other). two trees linked via data feeds, one in the north of Sweden, in (natural) situ, and another in Stockholm and elsewhere with a life-support system that mimics the limited quantitative data parameters.
locative?
smartmoblogsociallocativefictiongpsteredmedia creatures feeding one on the other, in a frenzy of “what’s next that’s cool” and built for speed. (which ultimately will move ‘it’ on to the next “Next Big Thing.”) seems like another wave of meme-hype reverberating around the extraordinarily limited space of global telecom networks (in collaboration with military satellites). is the price to be paid so removed and hard to comprehend? seems so. I have run across exactly zero critical words about this phenom. instead a flood of vacuous phrases and spin terms that are kept afloat in a social sea by the flatulent buoyancy of affluence, global capital, and ex-military industry. STILL. “radical decentralization” for autonomous consumption of text, image, audio and video — the re-presented and ultimately consumable world. autonomy for re-presentation and re-production of reality — one that fills the belly with gas and the head with language peddled by those same tired techno-utopian spin-doctors. technology always looks its ubiquitous best in the eyes of the über-class. as I click through the verbiage at locative.net (no longer extant) it feels like RedHerring from 1999 or so — so much interlocking terminology leading in a head-rich circle of hype-logic. headmap drops phrases like “everything in the world, animate and inanimate, abstract and concrete, has thoughts attached,” “every place has emotional attachments you can open and save,” and “life flows into inanimate objects.” and behind these words (more and more of them) there is no awareness of or anticipation that there was/is an essence that is a substrate for knowledge and abstracted/systematized human apprehension. that something comes before knowing. and the vitality-draining construction of a Babylonish Tower is an ongoing exercise that society never quite purged from its mind. the path that re-creation bumbles along is not the same one as creation. not even in the same forest.
When people consider the dangers of the chaos of a free intensely networked spatially augmented world, they should also consider that like all technological advances it offers tools to both sides of any argument. ‘ends appropriate means’ may seem ominous but the ends can just as well be social advancement. Even in a critical situation, disaster response and recovery in a world of spontaneous peer to peer mesh networks, running evolved social software, seems like a sane option for coordination of local efforts to recover and help from outside. The homeland security initiative raised the point that a citizen owned spatially aware communications network could be invaluable in a crisis. — headmap.org [ed: dead link] ideolog
what kind of crisis? when shopping is compromised? what can be meant by the terms ‘crisis’ and ‘homeland security’ being used in the same context? and, invaluable to whom? a threat to the status quo? or is there a radical suggestion that the masters tools be used to displace the master? funny, though, the effect of wielding a tool is perhaps the same, regardless of the wielder. that is, on the wielder, not on the hapless victim!
and what if, just what if these technological deployments are subsequently used for command-and-control, will everyone be surprised and taken aback? gee, we never imagined…
and the other core issue — whether you believe that all things are connected by a relatively un-knowable (or un-circumscribable) substratum or whether you consider that phenomenal existence is populated by discrete and completely independent objects, actions, and beings. that driving an SUV in Chicago rush hour has absolutely no connection to the presence of an M1 Abrams tank parked on a bridge outside of Falluja. that typing these words on this keyboard into this device has no connection with degradation of ground water in the Kwale region of Kenya from titanium mining.
Open Air Radio Barcelona 91.3 FM
Platoniq* invites neoscenes dreaming to take to the distant airwaves — courtesy of the CU Real Audio Helix server direct from the living room T2 command center in Boulder — with a two hour drift through the archive, testing the imagination behind the mixer to the extreme. thank gawd for 16-tracks! rumor in Barcelona is that it was a “great show indeed.”
*(una Sistema Cultural Co-Operativo — Platoniq es una organización internacional de productores culturales y desarrolladores de software, pionera en la producción y distribución de cultura copyleft. Desde el año 2001, llevan a cabo acciones y proyectos en los que los usos sociales de las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TICs) y el trabajo en red son aplicados al fomento de la comunicación, la autoformación y la organización ciudadana. El resultado de su trabajo genera innovadoras aplicaciones informáticas y metodologías, además de un amplio archivo audiovisual bajo licencias libres en Internet.)
Basho says
Long walk in Kaivopuisto and Eira, to the coast, soaking up brilliant sunshine, ensemble with Sanna after some days together. But the physical movement is a mask I wear lately to cover the dis-satisfaction with just about everything I have been up to. Worked many hours on a short video from Riga at medialab, and because not being used to the software (in a daily way), and technical problems with the firewire interface, I end up doing all the editing, and then blow the whole thing, the WHOLE damn thing, and have to stop working before crushing the machine in my hands. Made the decision to leave Finland for the summer, if not permanently. Seems to lack any drama, or possibility opening into viable futures. Sitting at a table looking across to that beautiful other, sinking into the eyes, the eyes, seeing the reflected brilliance of the spring Light.
But when all has been said, I’m not really the kind who is so completely enamored of solitude that he must hide every trace of himself away in the mountains and wilds. It’s just that, troubled by frequent illness and weary of dealing with people, I’ve come to dislike society. Again and again I think of the mistakes I’ve made in my clumsiness over the course of the years. There was a time when I envied those who had government offices or impressive domains, and on another occasion I considered entering the precincts of the Buddha and the teaching rooms of the patriarchs. Instead, I’ve worn out my body in journeys that are as aimless as the winds and clouds, and expended my feelings on flowers and birds. But somehow I’ve been able to make a living this way, and so in the end, unskilled and talent-less as I am, I give myself wholly to this one concern, poetry. — Matsuo Munefusa (Basho)
Oslo Presence
Back at Atelier Nord for the Oslo Presence get-together: good crew of folks intent on setting up a collaboration platform. It’ll be called N.I.C.E. (Network Interface for Cultural Exchange) and it grew out of the TempLab at Kiasma last year. more “Oslo Presence”
decoding
this morning a step was taken, leading somewhere. away, towards. not clear, as mind is not clear, but the need to move toward clarity is not in stoking time so full of actions and opportunities to meet and greet with a long-term result of spreading consciousness over spaces so vast and convoluted that the totality of psychic and biologic energy is stretched thinner than the skin that holds meat and frame together. skins, surfaces, interfaces. creative action wells up, and the machine presses it into forms that do not release or flow. these times have been corrupted. following lines that are not straight, wending through secret geometries that are reflections of reflections of reflections of Silicon Dioxide mediations. this space here, text-mediated, papered, peppered with repeated and repeated structures. grinds itself to a standstill. constantly, and revives with each successive letter, comma, and line. the death of the text is in the interstices between words, between the minimal elements of its meaning. between the granularity of its sense. the death of digital is in the total vacuum of the interstices. the null set, the Dirac-delta function. zero-to-infinity in NO time. discontinuity. a mirror of life-cycles without the relief that they repeat. no illustrations to add smooth relief to this linguistic torrent. separated from cafe9.net as content coordinator. but the double scheduling of things just makes it impossible for me to do the job and it just didn’t work, like I have never walked away from anything. ever. but when the energy isn’t good, I do it. and indeed there has been a pearl of liberation buried deep in the act of walking away, gritting sand, grinding into flesh, and flesh responding with defense mechanisms of great beauty. the pearl is buried, though, so deep in the act, that for it to expunge itself, to surface in view, into ocular reception, life has to be lived with a slowness that is not a slowness of time, but a slowness of being. time is irrelevant. it is transcendence that must be surfaced without regard to social favor or safety or security or even presence. curvilinear. rectilinear. geometries. mechanics. quanta, critical media theory, the newest shows on teevee, software, code, code, DeCode. Loki arrives tomorrow, to visit me and his old haunts. well, me and Aaron, his best friend. he wants to hang out with both of us at the same time, wants me to get to know Aaron better. such a jewel a child can be. I busily try to re-map the spring to ensure regular times here in Iceland, strange to think of that. but it is clear for me that Loki needs his Pabby around at least some of the time. it can’t be all the time, and that makes my heart ache.
busyness
Rasa and Raitis arrived last night, and today is filled with the energy of them starting their two-week workshop in streaming media. plus the busy-ness of continuing my installations of network administrative software around the Macintosh net. Stef calls from Manhattan, and right after, Sanna calls from Helsinki. I was able to fix Annika’s printer, solve a hub relay problem, reformat Bernice’s computer, go swimming and shopping, and make some calls re: Cafe9 plans. many emails. words with others. thoughts. a full day, leaving me tired-eyed and exhausted now, and it is only Monday.
more about the Hungarian crown
head over to C3 to meet Jukka and Andrea. Andrea and I go to lunch. she tells the story that any non-Hungarian monarch who wore the ancient Hungarian crown went totally mad; that the crown is a very powerful antenna with carefully designed receiving and grounding mechanisms. there were a special cadre of handlers who had specific instructions handed down over generations on what could and could not be done with the crown, so powerful and dangerous it was. Jukka meets us later. Back at Andrea’s office I check my email and notice a CD of Sufi music with Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn — I write down the CD catalog number, and later Andrea gives me a URL to check out featuring Sufi music. several calls later, we are able to connect with Miklos who heads both the C3 and the Inter(digital)media program at the Academy of Fine Art. the rest of the afternoon I spend with Jukka, who gives me a show of the project he has been working on during his residency at C3. an interactive piece based on MAX software and David Rokby’s VNS (Very Nervous System).
detours
What is it that we need in life? What is it that we are constantly grinding after in a state of calm and casual disinterest? What do we care about?
Heading to Vienna now. Another stop. Various plans have been detoured, so it appears that the entire month of March will be something of a vacation, so I need to make it that. And not stress so much about it. Back to work at the end of the month in Kiel after some relaxation and conversation and pleasant diversion. Nothing terribly productive, or labor-intensive. Besides, who cares anyway? Planting future seeds, but these seeds need the kind of regular tending that only an idiot would endure. I think I will really try to concentrate on, huh….? Doing my own thing?
Discovering that my abilities with the machines are much more limited creatively than my ideas would suggest. I freely admit that I am no expert on many software platforms, and really am not so good at producing finished work. The only decent work I have done digitally are the video pieces produced on the Avid system I had access last summer to at Polar Circuit in Tornio. In that instance I had dedicated access to a system for three straight weeks, with no real interruptions. Other attempts—especially with audio, which I aesthetically am quite tuned into—seem to stumble on software and consistent access issues. An inability to concentrate on production versus organization of information also seems to be a hurdle that keeps me from moving forwards.
True to other times, there are snow flurries between Nürnberg and Austria, in this bit of higher country. I recall two years ago, passing this way in April—as documented in this very travelog—snow and slow going for the track construction that is ongoing now. They are in the process of constructing a new high-speed line between Würzburg and Vienna.
Desdemona
The second day of the workshop, after a strong beginning with a lot of information, software seems to close down the openings. Tapio’s new/old bike appears at MediaBase, thanks to Kati, as wheels really help to get around town. I am exhausted by the condition of my back. I do go swimming, but cannot do much of a workout, and instead spend time in the sauna, enjoying that traditional Finnish luxury (well, not a luxury but an essential element of daily life). I contrast that in my mind with the Icelandic hot water, which, to be sure, is a rather new custom. Immersion in the heat of being. In this travelog, I find that I have little will to move my observations to much more than very arbitrary points of view, something like my photographic work to date. This attitude stems from the fatigue that generates from my broken back. The constant muscular pain and nerve stimulation drains me. I am deconstructing my life to discover why I suffer this ailment, but can find no answers. There are sensual circles that I cannot escape, monaural chants in both ears, eyes closed, but open. Tapio and Susanna are in Amsterdam for a few days, so I am now staying at their place until Tapio returns on Friday. Desdemona, their cat, craves company, and, of course, food. I listen to a RinneRadio CD and Deutsche Welle radio and the small noises of the street as the slow twiLight comes together in my tired head. I read the latest issue of SIKSI, and wonder at the usual-ness and unsurprising-ness of the Nordic Art World, like the rest of the Art World. The Hierarchy. Built and Built and Built. Torn by time and fashion and politics and its own dogs of war. Built and Built and Built. And the texts that reinforce all this. The texts that cumulatively are not dialogue, but are monologues of silent disposition.
Dialogue and Technology
My workshop at MUU MediaBase began this morning. It has the title Dialogue and Technology and will be addressing issues where the power of individual dialogue intersect the mediating forces of technology. My own introduction runs something like:
To approach Dialogue as a fundamental human condition that springs from individual existence and experience; to develop a definition of Dialogue as an historical, psychological, and ideological tool (a living way of going); to inspect the intersection of Dialogue and art (art as defined as that social-cultural production we consume); understand the implications of technological mediation on our attempts at Dialogue and compare these mediations; understand the power of single dialogue vs collective communications. (Practical considerations will include an examination of some of the software available including IRC (primary example), CUSeeMe, and MUD’s as well as discussing other applicable technology-based ways of going) Caveat: constructing such a workshop is problematic, it is without ideological base (except my own experience), so that the juxtaposition of our different selves and ways of going will be the most important aspect for this convocation. I am open to share the full construction of what I have pre-considered — something which I cannot plan in measured paces, but can only allow to spring from the Dialogue between us.
drugs
Okay, my mother insists that I go to her regular doctor for a checkup. I have been resisting this with visions of hundreds of dollars flying out the window for nothing, as well as getting the bad news that I have a condition demanding surgery. Then what? So. I end up going. The doctor is rather nice, and checks me out, reassuring me that it is nothing too serious, gives me some anti-inflammatory drugs (plenty of free samples), a sheet of exercises to do for the lower back, a bill for only $35.00, and sends me on my way much relieved that, indeed, I am not about to die or become cripple for life. He says about the pain: Live with it. Okay, I can handle that. And treat it with some stretching exercises, careful choices of what furniture to move, and what chairs to sit in when doing computer work. I find it funny that I can be so reassured by a simple visit to a doctor. Especially when, in the US, I don’t have so much expectations or even high regard for the general profession. Of course, I don’t condemn all doctors, as they are certainly victims in the whole health care system as much as patients. It really is a mess, the system, between the malpractice suits, the insurance companies, and the uninsured 30% of the population. Wow. When visiting with a doctor in the US, I am always bring up the fact that I have been living in Scandinavia for some years and try to get a response from the doctor regarding socialized medicine, but here I get little response. Sadly, I think doctors in the US are often pawns in a ‘market’ system that is run by insurance companies and lawyers. Anyway. I feel much better today, and even go into work this afternoon to talk with Mickey and Hope about a business plan and some technical details on the server architecture. I guess by now I am the Webmaster for LANKaster Online — and, although I readily admit I am a crummy designer, I do have a good sense of organization, and that will be beneficial for their business as they edge their way out of hardware support and into software and internet- and Web-related services. I come home and spend the evening typing on a whole series of things, letters, email correspondance, papers, this web space, the LANkaster web site, seems like life really revolves around this little machine! Can’t get away! Now to make a little money with it…
Relafen (nabumetone) is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that exhibits anti-inflammatory properties in pharmacologic studies. As with other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents, its mode of action is not known. However, the ability to inhibit prostaglandin synthesis may be involved in the anti-inflammatory effect. The parent compound is a prodrug, which undergoes hepatic biotransformation to the active component 6-methyl-2-naphthylacetic acid (6MNA), that is a potent inhibitor of prostaglandin synthesis.
And so it goes.
eight dialogues call/proposal
The forum in which this new art operates is not the materially stable pictorial space of painting nor the Euclidean space of sculptural form; it is the electronic virtual space of telematics where signs are afloat, where interactivity destroys the contemplative notion of beholder or connoisseur to replace it by the experiential notion of user or participant. The aesthetics of telecommunications operates the necessary move from pictorial representation to communicational experience. — Eduardo Kac
12.02.1996
Hallo friends:
This is a broadcast message to enLighten you about a project of mine that was selected for inclusion in an online/gallery exhibition which will take place on the Internet and within the confines of the List Art Center Gallery at MIT in Boston between January 29 and March 29. (FYI, the public site for the whole project — https://artnetweb.com/artnetweb/port/index.html)
At the moment I am interested in gathering eight of you as participants (significant *Others*) in one of these dialogues via the internet technology “IRC”, the infamous chat lines… Where we can have a two hour (or so) text-based dialogue remotely via our keyboards…
Each of the eight dialogues will be taking place (as scheduled at the moment) one a week between 2-4 pm EST (New York Time) on a Wednesday afternoon for the duration of the show… For those of you who are not familiar with IRC technology, if you have internet/WWW access, then you can run an IRC host on your local machine. There are even some Browser-based chat locations that can be used with no extra software — just Netscape or Explorer… Anyway, I hope to hear from eight of you (or more! — probably should have some alternates…) Again, these dialogues are not thematic or otherwise “directed”, they are *just* dialogues… more “eight dialogues call/proposal”
structure
I have been doing some restructuring of the site, trying to add sensible navigation buttons here and there, and thinking about the overall structure of the site. Conceptually, a site needs to have some kind of flow to it, else folks leap outward and onward in their surfing. I haven’t the time to really put thought in to it — as it would require a complete restructuring and re-writing of the site, as well as learning a new HTML software, which I don’t feel like doing, but the way I am typing code now is problematic… No time. NYC in two weeks.
digital working
Saturday morning, I get up earlier, as there are a thousand things to be doing, the problem is that there are so many people to visit, that if I do that continuously until I leave, then I get no additional work done — which may be the case anyways since I am still having software problems (Deck II and SoundDesigner deauthorize whenever the machine is shut down — a huge problem, considering that there are only a total of three authorizations possible, faugh!…) It’s always something. And I need to make my reservations on the Silja boat to Stockholm, shop for food, get something for Loki, on and on. I do not understand how it is to produce work anymore. Time has been so fragmented and broken in this travel, and, as well, having no place to base myself, I would need three more weeks at MUU to get a finished dinner piece done … It has been good to get back up to speed on the sound system, and begin to recall all the possibilities of sound editing. Makes me hungry for more … I eventually get everything in order and begin assembling raw material from the Dinners tapes that I have carried so many kilometers.
work & no dinner
Working at MUU, no dinner. Trouble with the sound software, spent the morning cranking to get it back into line.
dog-fighting & out of gas
Another very long intense day. Jim wanted me to meet some of the people at the Tampere School of Art and Communications where he is doing a special 6-month intensive study course on Environmental Art in Tampere, so we decided to drive over there for the day. The weather has turned sunny, almost completely clear sky finally. We headed out and had gotten about 45 km from Pori when the battery of the car went dead, stranding us on the road in the middle of the woods. We had to walk a few kilometers to a gas station and on the way overhead there were two new warplanes (recently bought from Amurika) dog-fighting in the puffy clouds. Expensive play. We got some help and then drove the car on to Tampere after sitting for a coffee at the gas station while the battery charged. The school, like all others in Finland, is extraordinarily well-equipped with the latest and hottest media equipment. SGIs, Pentiums, Macs, Beta Video, photo labs, production studios, and so on. Jim was able to collect the Director of the school and the Department Heads for me to meet, which was a nice treat. We took a short walking tour of Tampere, admiring the funky architecture and the clearness of the Light. I was able to jump on a networked Macintosh at the school, although it didn’t have FTP client-software for me to upload these pages which are now more than two weeks behind times, I was able to take care of email—this while Jim ran some errands he needed to take care of. Aimo, the Head of the Photography and Imaging program met us at 1600 to show a CDROM project that the students there did in collaboration with Atelier Nord and the Art Academy of Trondheim. The three of us then went for a beer. Before leaving Jim and I decided to check out a SVHS video camera for the weekend—the equipment storage room of the school is unbelievable! I have hardly seen such a conglomeration of expensive machines for the production of sounds and images ever in one place. Students also have their supplies like film, tapes, disks and developing paid for, too! Good deal!
long day
I finally arrive, by train, bus, and foot, at Björn’s place around ten in the morning. Completely exhausted, especially as his flat is a fifth-floor walk-up, but a good breakfast and good conversation revived me. Björn has just gotten an arts grant from his home country, Sweden, to continue work on a multimedia opera in collaboration with a number of colleagues. We spent the morning catching up on things and looking at his new computer equipment (enough toys to keep Bach busy). Finally, as the weather was a truly stunning sunny 25°C (75°F), we were compelled to go out and walk around the city. The Danes, being typical Scandinavians, were in various states of undress, and enjoying themselves in the summery weather — it is as though there had been no spring, rather a direct transition from winter to summer. On the City Hall Plaza we stopped in the sun for a beer, joining a delightful elderly woman, probably in her mid-eighties, Elly Justesen, a stranger to us, at a table. She told us how happy she was that spring had arrived, as she could get out and work on her golf handicap (which stood at an impressive 36 at the moment)! more “long day”
The Finished Work of Art is a Thing of the Past by Tom Sherman
At the close of this century we are witnessing a major change in how value is determined. The value of material wealth is giving way to the value of information. In this time of transition, these apparently incongruous value systems mix and form hybrid systems for determining value. Unique, precious material objects still hold their value; some actually increase in value in a relatively short time. Information that is useful but scarce is also valuable. Scarcity, even in an era marked by an abundance of information, is still a key factor in determining value. Those who hold valuable information may still wish to maintain exclusive, proprietary control – to increase the life of the information. Information is subject to decay or aging. Information is not inexhaustible. It may revert to data, the raw material from which it is formed. How and when information is maintained and released is determined by those in control; those who initially recognize its value, manage it and operate with it accordingly.
Contemporary art is part of an emerging sector of the economy called information and knowledge. Knowledge-workers create information for others to use. Worker in this case does not imply those who act only upon the instructions of others, knowledge-workers think for themselves. They know things that others do not know. They solve problems or help others solve problems. Knowledge- workers produce information, they transform data into information-distinguishing key aspects of disorder through the discovery and/or imposition of form. Artists fit nicely into this description of knowledge-worker. Contemporary artists, curators, critics and art historians are the knowledge- workers who form the contemporary art domain of the new sector of the economy called information and knowledge.
CONTEMPORARY ART MUST BE SEEN AS INFORMATION TO BE OF VALUE
more “The Finished Work of Art is a Thing of the Past by Tom Sherman”
Review of ISEA 94
After a raucous week in Helsinki at the ISEA 1994 conference, returning to Reykjavík, I made these notes:
To write an all-encompassing article about the ever-changing states of cybernetics in art and culture is impossible. Although every digital machine is grounded in the balanced order of Eastern religions through its binary yin-yang core, the one fundamental concept that dominates digital arts today is chaos. Furthermore, chaos and change are themselves only elements of the vast collective rush of information experience that is carrying us on into the virtual spaces of post-industrial info-society.
I recently enjoyed the very chaotic experience of attending the Fifth International Symposium on Electronic Art in Helsinki, co-sponsored by the Inter-Society on Electronic Arts (ISEA) and the Media Lab of the University of Art and Design (UIAH). The five-day conference in late August was attended by around 400 people and covered a wide range of topics, while a parallel array of artistic side-shows provided absolute proof of the far-ranging activity happening in cyberspace arts. more “Review of ISEA 94”