posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

and then

and then …

desperate.

where is meaning in a system so completely out of balance?

speed of adjustment too slow,

gyroscopic inertia too high,

center of gravity external,

lightening world spinning, all in a cosmos of dark energies and dark matters: occultation.

at once, briefly, looking up, with the eyes of god: plasma of blood reading plasma of star.

and then, exsanguination and final uplift into the approaching Void

hypostatic inversion, return return return

acceleration. what does this look like? bodycage pressing seat of heart, spine once shattered, now in tensile repair. static, greymetal frames cage neuronal pathways. acceleration of bodily demise is not motion, it is stasis.

it is time.

to make do. quickly. traverse no zenith. accelerate.

posted
  • place: Bundoora, VIC, Australia

passing note

500 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile flying
250 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile driving

These are very approximate/average numbers and are affected by the type of plane/vehicle and its relative efficiency.

We are changing the course of nature. Or, more precisely, without life on this planet, nature would be different. We are life in this place. Or we are life, as life is a perturbation of basal flows. An always-inchoate flow, but never completely still. This is all we are, a way for the cosmos to increase entropy, perhaps, as some believe, the best way for the cosmos to increase entropy, to wind down, into a cold and silent nothing.

But it’s all in the language, isn’t it? And even the language needs to get shucked, ripped from its stalk, tossed away to reveal and remind of the truth that the word is not the phenomena that it de-scribes …

Back to:

All Roads Lead To Rome.

as principle.

The questions are, What is Rome, and What is a Road?

et cetera

Nine km. in three days, not bad — it’s actually getting easy — I need to do more sprinting and drills, but just moving faster is best, feeling the greater resistance of the water and consequent speed. That and watching the sky and listening to the birds on the walk from my office to the pool. The sky was exceptionally dark and clear last night, it got down to maybe 40F, pretty cool. Totally dreaming about being in the bush, as they say here, in the back-country, the wilds, the wilderness. To watch the stars sink right to the black edge of the world. Squatting, eyes tearing in the chill condensate of mid-night. The Southern Cross is practically at Zenith now which seems strange, but at a similar latitude as in the north in winter, Polaris also reaches quite close to Zenith. Pity no chance of catching a good sky on this tour. Now too many folks to visit with before possible departure, too many things to do, including whether not to leave again.

posted
  • place: Millers Point, NSW, Australia

Statement of Multi-Cultural Experience and Practice

With 20 years of experience with students from more than 40 countries and with educational organizations in 25 countries, I have a deep appreciation of the issues involved in multi- or trans-cultural education. My own practice as an educator looks at multi-cultural learning from both a pragmatic and a positive point of view. Pragmatically, for example, all of my classes in the past years are composed of students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. This simple fact brings to the fore in every situation the difficulties of language, and the cultural expressions that are deeply formed by language. Most often working under second-language conditions, I have honed my sensitivities to the relative speeds of comprehension and expression that second-language imposes and to the contingencies of difference that surface. Because difference is such a core creative source, I make it a practice in my workshops that students engage each other so as to open the potential pathways for creative collaboration.

It is tremendously important that a learning/creative situation is relevant to each particular student and that they feel comfortable enough to evolve and take on an experience that reflects a personal, internal source. Teaching in up to 20 different linguistic and cultural situations each year I have developed an appreciation for what is possible, what each distinct viewpoint opens up in a collective learning experience, and how personally relevant work may be seen as an inspiring source for peers. This kind of movement through radically different domains requires me to have a flexibility to engage and facilitate under widely varying conditions. While this is a constant challenge, it is one that I seek out for its richness, liveliness, and the consequential open space that arises when learners, myself included, are faced with the unknown — both inside the Self and inside the Other that they face. Because a fundamental concept of my creative work as well as my seminars and workshops is the facilitation of distributed (that is, non-hierarchic) network systems, I specifically deal with this human-to-human dynamic both in the conceptual/theoretical content as well as the lived practices that I stimulate in the classroom.

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  • author: Eric Kluitenberg
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog

The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realize the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of tele-presence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the re-invigoration of the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favor of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style. As current systems of hyper-mobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits – most prominently in the intense debate on global warming – citizens and organizations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced tele-presence technologies.

ElectroSmog and the quest for a sustainable immobility

The ElectroSmog festival for sustainable immobility, staged in March 2010 [1], was both an exploration of this grand promise of tele-presence and a radical attempt to create a new form of public meeting across the globe in real-time. ElectroSmog tried to break with traditional conventions of staging international public festivals and conferences through a set of simple rules: No presenter was allowed to travel across their own regional boundaries to join in any of the public events of the festival, while each event should always be organized in two or more locations at the same time. To enable the traditional functions of a public festival, conversation, encounter, and performance, physical meetings across geographical divides therefore had to be replaced by mediated encounters.

The festival was organized at a moment when internet-based techniques of tele-connection, video-telephony, visual multi-user on-line environments, live streams, and various forms of real-time text interfaces had become available for the general public, virtually around the globe. No longer an object of futurology ElectroSmog tried to establish the new critical uses that could be developed with these every day life technologies, especially the new breeds of real-time technologies. The main question here was if a new form of public assembly could emerge from the new distributed space-time configurations that had been the object of heated debates already for so many years?
more “Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog”

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I and Thou

It is not possible to live in the bare present. Life would be quite consumed if precautions were not taken to subdue the present speedily and thoroughly. But it is possible to live in the bare past, indeed only in it may a life be organized. We only need to fill each moment with experiencing and using, and it ceases to burn. — Martin Buber

Buber, M., 1958. I and Thou, New York, NY: Scribner.

The rumbling classic of coming-to-be in the dynamic of encounter with the Other. Buber’s classic work is dense and difficult. Working through it is slow. It may take a month, or perhaps a year. Sentence by sentence, discovering resonant meaning. While preparing for the doctoral assessment arising in a couple week’s time. Strange to have actually bought a copy of I and Thou there in Portland, along with a new copy of Wilhelm’s I Ching. Nothing to be made of it except that mediated energies from the Other are felt, are compelling, and, in the end, are all we have. But does spirit need this mediation, or, as is framed in many systems, is it a task, a challenge, set to our hungry roving ghosts by something greater, or is it merely the nature of it all, of which we are a substantive part?

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ad infinitum

After a long hiatus, the need to get back to work on this space surfaces. A continent away. A fiscal quarter later. And feeling like the speed of days is such that a chin-strap is necessary on the Tilley hat, though it’s not worn here yet, the sun is still in winter distance, and there’s not been enough of it (indoors too much) to warrant head-coverings.

Doctoral assessment time, in a couple weeks, though it would seem that the hoop to leap through is spacious. Or maybe specious — where casuists squabble over the use of meaning to construct be-ing.

But at least have joined the food coop, inspired by Ann-Marie’s dedication.

More soon. eh?

posted
  • place: Wendover, Utah

CLUI: Day Thirty-Two — touch-and-go

KC-135, Wendover Air Base, Wendover, Utah, April 2010

A KC-135 Stratotanker spends the morning and evening making touch-and-go-landings. In between I suppose he’s busy re-fueling the F/A-18’s that are prowling the air all day. Immediately prior to spotting him on the first round, a series of very large concussive explosions shake everything — either very close sonic booms or bombing on the range.

An early evening cycle ride to the east, around the industrial area, then south along the perimeter of the airport runways and the speed track, all the way to the distant bunker and taxiway where the loading pit for the Enola Gay’s special cargo stands. The bomb was so heavy and large, they had to make a eight-foot-deep rectangular pit with a hydraulic lifting mechanism to drop the bomb into, roll the plane over it, then lift the bomb into the plane’s bomb bay.

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CLUI: Day Seventeen — Bonneville

sunset on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, April 2010

There is a large (black) raven (Corvus corax) who is in residence in the Enola Gay Hangar. There are some major areas of the roof and sides of the hangar where the corrugated sheeting has (surely!)been blown off over the years, so the interior is exposed to the elements and to natural energies. This raven (or two) is in residence somewhere high in the iron girders. Much of each day, especially during morning and evening, the raven is seen flying very purposefully between the hangar and a spot some 200 meters east of the hangar where there are some low scrubby bushes and open ground. (S)he flies back and forth not far from the window that I look out from on occasion as I work when inside the residency unit. Movement out the window catches my attention and about half the time it is the raven making this low and very determinate transit between the hangar and this spot. Occasionally the movement will be from the ground squirrel couple who has taken up residence in the underbelly of the Airstream, and otherwise, the few lizards will do their peculiar dances across the gravelly yard when it is warm; and lately, a handful of very small birds will spend the early evening hours, before sunset, picking aphids off the salt brush bush growing in the yard. But it is the raven who is most compelling. Back and forth. Before I leave, I want to hang out in the watch-tower and simply observe the flight cycle. I reckon (s)he’s gathering sticks for a nest, but I haven’t clearly seen anything in his/her beak on the flights back to the hangar, so it’s a question: what’s ‘e doin’? Actually it could be a pair of them, they are know to find a partner and mate for life. Hmmm, novel idea…

The ground squirrel pair is another matter. They’re gaining access to the otherwise pretty solid and gapless lower framework of the Airstream via the fold-out step area below the front door. There are also areas for critters to enter via the electrical and water hookup doors. One of those has a broken latch, so I think I will tap and screw that one down semi-permanently as the vehicle isn’t going to be moved anytime soon.

Neal and I head out to the Bonneville Flats towards evening. I want to cycle and he has some filming to do. Amazing Light. I cycle for about an hour, going about 8-10 miles out and then back. Hard to tell, dimensions are reduced to time alone (and body metrics). About five miles out there is a cluster of vehicles, apparently a photo shoot happening. Cycling down the ‘main drag’ of the speed-test area is a singular experience. Speed becomes necessary to overcome the lack of Cartesian cues, no pathway. Got to get somewhere. Got to approach those little specks in the distance. Oh, those are cars, sure takes a long time to get closer. Hit some areas where the salt is wet and there are loose crystals which splatter all over me. It mostly appears like ice, so brain is thinking danger! slick!, but it is quite the opposite, sticky like climbing on limestone.

The accompanying images are suffering from more digital camera woes — dust on the CCD. Absolutely disgusting. I don’t have a proper removal kit, and this Nikon model doesn’t have one of the vibrating sensors that can dislodge that extremely irritating blobs that end up on the sensor despite me never taking the lens off. Yet another disappointment with this Nikon (D200) — for the price paid it is real garbage compared to the old analog F2as and even Nikkormats from the 1970’s. I never had dust-on-film problems like this, ever! Neal has a nice Canon SLR system from his university, along with a HD 3-CCD chip DV cam. I’m jealous.

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CLUI: Day Seven — shorelines

looking north to Pilot Peak, off Rt. 93, near Wendover, Nevada, April 2010
Aim for the nearest topological features to the south, some small intrusives, an isolated fault block, likely, rhyolitic basalts of some sort (with some peridotites or greenstones possibly?). Lake Bonneville paleo-shorelines are visible, with a prominent one slicing the hills like a poorly-made isometric topo model. The hills are technically on the Air Force test range, but I disregard the signs (parking behind some low hills across the road in order not to attract attention).

Definitely a different regime than, say, the Sonoran desert. Here, the land seems more sterile and has only very low scrub, most less than a foot high. Low or black sagebrush (Artemisia), salt brush (Atriplex), rabbit brush, black brush, tumbleweed (Salsola pestifera), and a handful of other species are thinly scattered, with either desert varnish, pebbly sand, or the occasional small colony of cryptobiotic soil. Can’t really tell if this lack is a direct result from severe overgrazing (this is, after all, BLM land) or just a harsh (colder, drier!) regime here compared to the relatively abundant biota of the Sonoran.

Plenty of evidence of other human intrusions on top of the igneous stuff that these hills are made of. Bullet casings, scraps of glass and metal everywhere, bullet holes in anything worth shooting at. Two mines have burrowed into the earth, leaving debris, holes, and mounds, a refrigerator with major firearm damage, a twisted bike frame, and the shattered glass crunching underfoot.

The hills are much larger than they initially appear, a frequent phenomena in a landscape without the normal metrics for scale (trees and human structures). A great view in all directions from the top.

A lake shore sand deposit in the form of a light tan mudflat attracts my attention on the talus-skiing descent, as it is bisected by the old roadbed which exhibits the typical roadbed riparian affect — with visibly larger brush on either side of the eroding pavement — the direct affect of the slight concentration of runoff precipitation. Walking here in the flats one feels … exposed … as the occasional mining truck speeds by a mile or so away. The only relief among short sage brush are the holes dug by coyotes into smaller varmit holes, now that would be something to watch! Good for spraining an ankle if step is not watched closely. The only other difference are the widely scattered aluminum beer cans, mostly effaced of any markings by the brutal sun, sitting pell-mell in the sand.

I notice later that the Nikon has more crap on the CCD, about which nothing can be done — you can see two spots in the lower left center of the images. My irritation with this camera system increases as the years go by. I am constantly astonished at the poor quality of the lens, along with the dirt accumulation on the CCD — it’s a closed system, for god’s sake, how does it keep getting dirty? I don’t even take the lens off, ever! I think the Canon system is superior both optically and technologically. But nothing to be done about it, unless I decide against getting a new laptop and instead get a new camera. Ach, I get tired of technology!

posted
  • place: en route Prescott, Arizona - Paria, Utah

on the road again

sandstorm, Navaho Reservation, Arizona, March 2010
Heading out on a three-month road-trip. Tailwind across the reservation at least part of the time. Embarkation for slickrock and slot canyons, salt pans, playa, and rotated fault-blocks. Heavy tailwind expected, along with winter weather for the rest of the week across the entire west. Hope to appear, unscathed, at the other end in Wendover.

The road fills the head with eye-blink disorientation. Transient fragments of thoughts thrum along in no particular order, no rhythm, as unconnected as any sequence of fated events: reflecting fated events in minds-eyes. Too much seen outside the window, beyond the amorphous silica barrier. And too much not sensible because of that attenuated presence versus the full immersion. (Virtual) movement. Looking for roadside memorials this time. Something to lock the thoughts into the reality of mortal coils. Find a few. Stopping for them is always a bit tricky, especially with a 65- or 75-mph speed limit. I drive a bit slow with this old vehicle of mine, and slower still so that once I spy a cross of some sort, I can safely stop on the shoulder. To die on the same stretch of road somehow would not be auspicious; under the wide silent sky and red cliffs, stars, with the smell of spring sage in the air. Wind passing through shredded plastic bags caught on the barbed-wire fence. Someone told me those bags are called witches panties. A small golden bell tinkles vacantly, tied to a wreath of plastic flowers shivering in the wind.

What is the difference between that containable in the reduced tracing of recorded, reproduced, recreated image or sound and that which resists the reductive process with an impassive tenacity, no, a merely passive and eternal persistence. The difference lies in what the observer brings to the reductive process and what the hearer, viewer brings when consuming the reduced trace. It has little if anything to the originary energy of the thing, das Ding, das Ganze, itself. The emanations affect the reduction, there is a direct correlation, but in the technique, the process of reduction is deeply tied to the techno-social. No way to decouple that. (Or is there?)

All the way from telling stories to making movies to painting canvases to building houses.

What is the advantage of shunting the energy of a situation through more and more of the techno-social domain? Or does it matter at all? Compare (telling) stories in person about an experience (sono-linguistic reductions) with posting digital photographs online (visible radiation reductions). In principle a reduction is a reduction is a reduction. And when compared the the situated phenomena itself, any and all reductions are not the thing itself.

The dam at Lake Powell, as with the Hoover, a high-security zone, protected by hired guns. No bags allowed in the visitors center. Celebrations of all that the techno-social can bring to the merely social, along with a big-screen overview of the lake at 59-percent-capacity with a fat white bathtub ring contrasting the red rock cliffs. German tourists debate the advantages of the Best Western versus the Quality Inn motels.

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musings before a roadtrip

Leaving aside the refined mapping of experience-once-removed. And instead, gathering experience first hand, in the moment, where circumspection is wistful, wasteful, or even dangerous.

Music on the road. Traveling minstrels, buskers, harmonica-playing hobos. playing for people on the road, or playing whilst on the road. Meeting at the roadhouse. Beyond the city limits. What goes down when humans engage beyond the control of the proper social order. What goes on outside the ordered flows of town. Interstitial in the sense that between towns lie the open roads. bandits, women and men of loose moral fortitude, and wild animals. The space of chaotic flow.

We suspect that even though travel in the modern world seems to have been taken over by the Commodity — even though the networks of convivial reciprocity seem to have vanished from the map — even though tourism seems to have triumphed — even so — we continue to suspect that other pathways still persist, other tracks, unofficial, not noted on the map, perhaps even “secret” — pathways still linked to the possibility of an economy of the Gift, smugglers’ routes for free spirits, known only to the geomantic guerrillas of the art of travel.

As a matter of fact, we don’t just “suspect” it. We know it. We know there exists an art of travel. — Hakim Bey, Overcoming Tourism

What is the nature of what is feared outside the purview of human controlled flows? Is it merely nature? It is the presence of (or the risk of) death — that singular element that lies completely beyond human control, for ever? It cannot be erased from the wild kernel of being. Some seek the thrill of facing it, some hide in states of paranoid control to keep it as far away as possible, backing away only to fall over a precipice unseen behind. Religion is the construct that irrationally rationalizes the presence of the unknown, of death, and of corrupt social order.

… back to the road …

The body of speed. (hunt and/or be hunted). Movement is the first escape from death. Running to safety, to the nearest tree. Running to fetch the weapon that you left at home. Running for the crowd so that the odds of getting eaten are marginally lowered. Running fast. Running to change places. Running to make a moving target. Running for help! Running to the Library!

The Book as fuel for keeping warm and The Book as weapon: dictionaries and encyclopedias work best for both purposes. Book as pillow. Book as door-stop. Book as object sensed orbiting centers of cultural gravity. Textual asteroids and debris. Escape that field.

The Book as tool for enhancing procreative potential and staving off death. Rather, Books on how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading about how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading-while-driving. Speed. And then it comes. uuuuuhhh.

20100206-2007-0862

nah. gotcha, I’m outta here, step on it, hit the gas, burn some rubber, spray some gravel in ‘is face…

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roadkill

death strewn on the highway. roadkill. carnivore, herbivore, amphibian, insect: getting to the other side of the road is just part of the inexorable (natural) systemic flow. Roadkill represents one intersection of human-defined flows and naturally-existing flows. The result of this fundamental intersection is near-death or absolute annihilation, a rapid reduction to component complex molecules. from the thathunk of meatier species to the simple fluttering splat of the butterfly. Leathery carcasses that persist for days despite the brutal pounding of truck tires and hard-to-remove stains on the windshield that resist even the most vigorous squeegee scrubbing whilst filling-up the tank.

Insects with a low weight-to-surface-area ratio can sometimes avoid liquidation by the slipstream effect which will carry them up and over the vehicle. But trajectory is all, and the meatier bugs, the swarming locusts and grasshoppers, have too much mass in their sagging torsos to experience this sanctified reprieve and thus become one with their maker in a soul-wrenching milli-second that can be a marvel of colorful abstraction a-la Pollack.

Along one stretch of the UFO Highway in Nevada, red locusts were on the march northward along a specific pathway that they were intent on following without regard to individual survival. At 60 MPH, the dynamic was such that their flight reaction to the approaching truck got them only a couple feet off the ground, not over the height of the hood, so, the lower grill was a mass of dessicated carcasses by the time we got to the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, a hundred miles away. Many more were simply crushed by the wheels, leaving greasy red-greenish stains on the road and in the wheel-wells: their natural trajectory on the ground was clearly discernible where it intersected with roads. I noticed in the gas station parking lot in Ely there was a small flock of birds who were picking over the the resulting detritus on the ground, and when they could manage, actually hanging onto the grills and directly harvesting the carnage, ‘burp!’ What would the evolutionary outcomes be? Birds that can smell idling cars? Locusts who tunnel for 40 feet underground when they encounter traces of heavy hydrocarbons, with luck, getting to the other side.

Larger animals, the mammals are the worst, though, when encountered at any speed. Moose and elk torsos will behave something like the old paper-straw-through-the-raw-potato trick — inertial physics at its most fundamental. The front bumper of the car will take out the long spindly legs whilst the massive quarter-ton of body-meat, at just the right height to clear the hood, will simply stay where it is. But where it is relative to the speeding windshield means that it will simply obliterate anything in the front seats of the vehicle. At low speeds, this can mean a struggling, injured animal in the laps of struggling, injured humans, gah.

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  • place: Darlington, NSW, Australia

Victoria Pool

the pool closest to my uni office. 50-meter, non-chlorinated (but no one seemed to know what type of water purification system they used), it turns my silver ring a copper-brown on a 3000-meter workout. it’s in the middle of Victoria Park and next to Sydney Uni as well. designated lane speeds, although I never see the guards enforce it, on the other hand, never really have problems with slackers. for casual workouts (i.e., not team or Masters workouts), I’m definitely in the fast lane, about 20% of the other (fast lane) swimmers can pace or exceed my speed. I thought the Aussies would kick my ass in the pool! not!

and then there is this bit of graffiti at the 11th floor of Building 1 (also known as “the ugliest building in Sydney”). got to bring this to the attention of the admin to do something about. somewhat innocuous, but still very disturbing.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

the table

finally got some photos of the table Bill made for me. he did an outstanding job on it. simple, elegant, giving all the attention to the luxurious black walnut wood stock that languished so long in the garage.

otherwise, time moves. relative and possibly unjust. with its velocity and accelerations, decelerations, suspensions. all towards the ensuing shift.

images churned out. from a machine. but images show so little of the loved land, how it is loved, how it is felt, experienced, how embodied self is immersed in it.

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  • place: Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado

Medano Pass

a much longer ramble with a heavy wind at my back until it’s time to turn around. the dunes are located here for a reason and that reason is the frequency of very intense winds being funneled across the valley into Medano Pass where the sand generated by the Rio Grande out-wash in the (west side of the) valley is dropped in large quantities against the Sangre de Christo mountains. it’s a marvelous phenomena. today, I follow the base of the dunes along Medano Creek which is flowing with copious quantities of chilly snow-melt. the intersection of the dunes with the creek and the mountain terrain is rich with variable riparian regimes and provides shelter from the wind which is carrying plenty of grit up to about 3 feet off the dune surface. the air is charged with particles, it is charged. more “Medano Pass”

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  • place: en route Prescott, Arizona - Great Sand Dunes, Colorado

wind devils

next movements. north east from here to there. google tells me that going down to I-17 is slightly shorter than going via 89 north to Flagstaff, deciding the final route at the last minute: the most direct to the Great Sand Dunes. distance versus time. distance usually means better scenery: time is usually Interstate. a slow start, big breakfast, hard workout at the Y, some food shopping, and finally around noon taking off. heavy, heavy wind from the south west. kicks mileage on the truck up to 33 mpg rocketing across the reservation accompanied by wind devils and a haze of atmospheric debris. vehicle travel driven by hydrocarbons. stop to make images that conform to the materializing hydrocarbon system series and the domination of landscape series. make Cortez at sunset. and rocket through the San Juans in the dark, pacing a couple empty semi-trucks (they had to be empty to keep up the speeds and momentum they managed up Wolf Creek Pass). short stop in the dark at the Center of the Universe. that has never happened before in the near-30-years of visits. on the west and south side, for the first time ever, there are the crude marks of adolescent love, hardly to be classified as graffiti. too tired after the 12-hour drive to really contemplate it, head onwards to the Great Sand Dunes. the campground is about half full, crowded, I feel spoiled after a number of the previous visits way off-season I’ve been camping there solo.

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Thompson (NOT Fred)

The Army Corps of Engineers with its national system of dams and levees has shown us what happens when the military-industrial approach in which Man dominates nature is put to work in eliminating wet lands where wild birds gather and sedimentary islands build up to break ocean surges. This form of engineering is the same kind of military-industrial thinking that salinates the soil with center-pivot agriculture and drains the Ogalala aquifer to replace biodiversity with monocrops held in place with the chemical warfare of pesticides. And the animal prisoners taken in this war are held in place in the concentration camps of feedlots and drugged with antibiotics and growth hormones to prepare them for mass slaughter. Their carcasses are then processed in fast food fuel stations along highway strips that are the same ugly clutter of signs and stops from Anchorage to Miami. Our President [Bush] is comfortable with this mentality because for him nature is basically a golf course or a ranch — or a national park turned into a country club where folks can burn off stress by speeding over the snow while polluting the air of Yellowstone with gas-guzzling skidoos. — William Irwin Thompson, essays

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  • place: en-route Bernalillo, New Mexico - Prescott, Arizona

off the Colorado Plateau

Do the rest of the drive, feeling on edge — that the conditions at Flagstaff are deteriorating by the minute. No leisurely road-trip photos, only images from the road, social mind floating on radio scanning instead of ipodding. Doing I-40 west from Albuquerque as fast as possible, unfortunately, as the Light is always stimulating across this corner of Arizona and New Mexico. There are serious winter road condition issues in Flag, as expected, and it’s always hairy to be rocketing down the road at high speed on ice, not pavement. It’s been worse, but when it’s worse, the interstate is then closed. Very marginal. Very stressful. A relief to finally drop down the Mogollon Rim 3000 feet where the snow turns to rain.

The verdict is that the truck handles very well in winter conditions — with some weight in the back and marginally decent tires.

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Infinite Jest: Kinds Of Light

Kim proposes a new microsound project, making sound tracks for the experimental films of David F. Wallace’s fictional character James O. Incadenza in the book Infinite Jest. I pick Kinds of Light as it immediately strikes a resonance and subsequently patch together an obsessive piece in 24 hours (4,444 frame splices on a multi-track of a water performance in Pool Creek Canyon (changing the course of history)), shatter-welded with audio from video footage of standing at a confluence in the West Elk Wilderness entranced by the Pele’s hair of water coming from the sun). definite sonic hyper-retinality.

(stereo audio, 7.4 mb)

I missed Wallace during my North Amurikan vacancy of the last 20 years. surprised I hadn’t run across him randomly, though, given the households that I have ramble through on the nomadic way. George knew him and speaks highly of his character. sadly for all of us, another victim of the intensity of be-ing. I plow through Oblivion, and a couple other books that I managed to recall at the library. extremely dense. the first short story I read drove me, half-way through, into a delirious sleep from which I woke ten minutes later, not knowing where I was. jittery, caffeine-fueled, precise jewels. you see the faceting process, the cutting of the entire glittering crystal, a tedium of focus, the high-speed grind with diamond grit, a rocking, polishing movement across the charged wheel. spun tales. fiber glass. each brittle thread opening a bloodless wound which nano-gapes at the whole fuckin’ world, all at once. he would be Brakhage’s cinematographer if Brakhage was blind and able only to see the inside of his eyelids.

“Kinds Of Light” – B.S. Meniscus Films, Ltd. No cast; 16 mm; 3 minutes; color; silent. 4,444 individual frames, each of which photo depicts lights of different source, wavelength, and candle power, each reflected off the same unpolished tin plate and rendered disorienting at normal projection speeds by the hyper-retinal speed at which they pass. CELLULOID, LIMITED METROPOLITAN BOSTON RELEASE, REQUIRES PROJECTION AT .25 NORMAL SPROCKET DRIVE

posted
  • place: Kollafjördur, Iceland

out to sea in ships

Simmi invites Stefan, Loki, and I out for a fast fishing cruise on Kollafjördur on his speedboat. I happen to hook the first cod and pull in a number more. Stefan and I had to stop at ten moderate-sized fish because we only had a little box to put them in. Simmi was bleeding for the whole trip after slicing his thumb open with the fillet knife. we hailed a trawler for some band-aids, turns out he should have had stitches, but it was too late when he finally went to the doctor the next day. the cockpit of the boat looked like a crime scene.

posted
  • place: en route Berlin, Germany - Vilnius, Lithuania

non-transformative systems

flying in: back in Lithuania. immediately the impression of the system not having changed much. not like the transformations happening in Berlin. aside from the few tourist drags, the town is like it was four years ago. and the system still resonates a deep conservative polarity with an inertia still flowing in resistance to … anything new.

lunch with Mindaugas with the first of several very mediocre meals. and meet Viktorija and Agle, the enthusiastic and hard-working student union officers who are organizing the whole workshop. I am impressed immediately with their determination to make a difference. sadly it is exactly these kinds of spirits who are the ones who leave Lithuania because a realization that things are not changing.

got to tour the Academy, with all it’s meter-thick walls and pre-Gothic arched ceilings. no wonder the wi-fi (communications) network doesn’t work so well. the place is naturally shielded from anything, it is part of some older church construction. a convent chapel or so. along with a 1970’s-era structure which is quite intense. in the center of the complex are two major churches, St. Francis’ and the Bernardine. there were the big changes from the East-West polarization collapsing, but since then there are few if any shifts in the faculty, and worse, the mentality. departments are rigidly defined by materialist agendas and territories of control. students are given only cursory freedom to innovate. huh? how do they survive. stoic, a little like Icelanders, but dreaming of more, with Europe at the doorstep. thank god for the Erasmus exchange program which allows the most adventurous to escape to better things.

Alvydas, head of the Media Department, the most open situation in the Academy, mentions again the idea of inviting me back as guest faculty, but I have reservations. on one hand any place is tolerable for a year, but it would be a serious challenge to cope with the conservative vectors in the social system.

(00:03:38, stereo audio, 7 mb)

We stay in rooms reserved at the academy hostel, in the guest’s wing, with windows opening on a small street that is so loud, it’s hard to carry on a conversation with the window even cracked open. The garbage truck rattles the windows and so does each car blasting up the street. Stone walls + narrow streets + no speed limits + bad roads = intense noise levels.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

swimming

out to the pool. well, one of the 50-meter pools is for competitive swimmers (remember the East German women’s swim team in the 1970’s?). the pool open for those sub-human non-competitive swimmers is pretty crowded at 20:30, but I manage to do 700 meters. have to wait for slow folks, there is no lane speed criteria. and I forget my earplugs. everybody wears bath sandals — does this mean there are virulent foot fungi around? no pull-buoys or any other items for borrowing, they are all in locked baskets. however. decent water temps, it gets a bit less crowded after 2100, and I can get from the house to the water in about 10 minutes. on the way home I do another detour further east into a new-looking neighborhood which could be in suburban Helsinki, or maybe somewhere in California. big gas station with 16 pumps and high-octane fuel running at EUR 1.60 per liter — that’s about USD 9.00 per gallon. uff. shiny new mid-rise apartment blocks, chain grocery stores and hotels. not very Berlin-like as visioned in the imagination of Berlin being an exotic destination. it evens begins to construct in mind the idea how similar Germany and the US are in the throes of evolved consumer globalism. true, one can probably find more Made in Germany items in a typical German home than one would find Made in the USA items in an American’s home, but certain cues point more to similarity than difference. over-consumers — fat people being a fundamental evidence; mega-shopping centers; global-chain brands; fashion-as-lifestyle, or is it lifestyle-as-fashion? (either way having approximately the same affect on sustainable living!); status, status, status :: consume, consume, consume…

The cheapest, cleanest energy is the energy you don’t use. — Jenny Powers of the Natural Resources Defense Council

 
Thank you Jenny. Now how about SHOUTING THAT direct into every cochlea, maybe somebody will get it!

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

Pool!

faugh! still on those get-to-know-the-neighborhood rambles when I get tired of thrashing letters around on the screen. today, I discover the Schwimm- und Sprunghalle im Europapark a mere 200 meters from the flat. with not one, but TWO 25×50 meter pools and a third 21×25 meter therapy pool, kids pools, and a whole slew of diving platforms up to 10 meters. yes! reduced rates before 0800 and after 2000. very cool. first trip will be on Thursday. it’s right next to a velodrome — the round and square structures in the picture. I have to do some squinting and ask some stumbling questions at the cashiers to get a picture of the situation. and, looking up more info online, I discover the Swimmers Guide which has a bit of other info in English. along with a site that elaborates a subject dear to my heart, lap etiquette. if only this existed in German. pools here are always a bit of a challenge, though the Europapark one appears to at least have lane markers, that’s a start. speed designations on the lanes would be best, but I am not expecting them. rumor has it there are kick-boards and pull-buoys available. yes! it’s been four months since I’ve been swimming. I can’t believe it! that’s easily the longest time I have been out of the water during my adult life. I can already feel the shredded shoulders of the day after, and I’m sure not to be able to make a simple 1K. a 50-meter pool is the toughest workout, especially to start off with.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

another TAZ?

tmp.deluxe. call for interest. huh? a large empty space inside a renovated neoclassic building with high ceilings and big windows. controlled on the U1 line by two smiling-but-thuggish youngsters merely flashing their KVB identity cards. as a performance or so. fortuitous to have the right ticket. €2.10 normal tariff. not so cheap. I’m committed to a single round-trip maximum per day. how to do this when a typical day might require getting to four destinations or so. anyway, make it to the tmp.space. they are asking for proposals. slowly the space fills. black clothes, I’m no exception other than wearing faded jeans. there are two of us sitting at a raw chip-board table. call for interest. two large stacks of bluish-white A4 paper, two glass ash trays, one with a few pens cradled in it, one empty. the ubiquitous stench of cigarettes. why is that smell the quintessence of stale? somebody changes the music — electronica for death-metal or so. conversations trip along and don’t seem to get through the aesthetic miasma that is anchored in the stacks of paper and the ashtrays. following the reasoning, following the line. and attempting to insert energy into the situation. having seen and been seen. and a child in a pink t-shirt wanders around. Papa! Papa! making space-testing sounds. to locate herself in the space. doing this, she locates all other receivers in themselves. placing them in the stiff reserve of their aesthetic opinions which they trade in measures, lubricated by wine. locative media while Rome Burns. or is this an exaggeration? more “another TAZ?”

posted
  • place: Düsternbrooke, Kiel, Germany

waiting for T-Com

waiting for Deutsche Telekom is not unlike waiting for Godot. there is a tacit sense of inevitable loss and failure. of lack and dis-communications. or a return just at the singular moment when one has to run to the toilet, to the post, or just to the garden house to fetch a tool or to bring a case of empties onto the terrace. the T-Kom guy is waiting down the block with a pair of binoculars and a high-sensitivity microphone to catch these moments, whereupon he runs to the door, knocks Lightly, and runs back to his truck, driving off in a fury of absence, already composing in mind the scenario to type into his PDA. nobody home, case closed. ISDN? DSL? T-Online? Festnetz? upload? download? surfen? HotSpot Standorten? fahgettit. case closed. wait until next week. or so.

yeah, it’s frustrating, participating in this techno-social system when it doesn’t work. when it does, the frustration in sublimated by the satisfaction of social functioning.

a trip to the T-Com office in Kiel ends up not really helping, the pretty girl behind the counter only knows the scripts that she is taught and how to keep her shirt slightly unbuttoned so that her lacy black bra shows. so, no real problem-solving can be accomplished — on the contrary, she adds another layer of problems by issuing a modem which is incompatible with the data speeds of the service that Christian has ordered. crazy. and the way the corporation makes the usual stupid move of constructing a proprietary face/interface on the network. to cover the complexity with a non-functional layer of bullshit. more than annoying. and the worst is the propaganda of the advertising showing ubiquitously grinning models who clearly are not real people.

what else is new? another book Noise Media Language about (fluxus) (sound) (artist) Yasunao Tone put out by errant bodies — looks real interesting.

posted
  • place: White Mountains, California

high

attenuated transitions, on the same route taken two months previous almost to the day. across the Central Valley, and the ascent of the Sierras. not too crowded for a Saturday around peak season. so much drier than two months ago. most creeks in Yosemite are dry washes. fill the 10 gallon bladder with water from the high-pressure spigot at the east end of the Tioga grade. fill the water bottles and the 2.5 gallon tank as well. and drink a good fill. cold, damn good water. courtesy the Donner Electric Company. there are two spigots, another man is filling a large bladder in the back of his SUV. when I’m done, a pickup pulls up, the guy mouthing “get outta the way!” to me as I get into the cab of my truck. contorting my mouth into a variety of shapes, without using any particular language or vocabulary, I then smile and slowly pull away, waving. on down the road, south on 395 past Mono Lake, being passed by cars moving at excess of 80 mph most of the time. going backwards whilst going forward. one sedan passes. I vaguely notice the occupants. fifteen minutes later a tableau reveals itself. several cars parked on either side of the road, and that same sedan flipped over in the median, a group of people milling around. the D200 records several shots as I pass, transcendent. to Bishop. from Bishop one heads a bit south then east into the White Mountains on a very steep and twisted paved road which ends up in the Deep Springs Valley passing the mythological Deep Springs College. about half-way to the College is the turn-off into the Bristlecone Pine Wilderness area. a 40-mile trek on a bad dirt road. to the locked gate. tooling along, following the principle that wash-board surfaces are best negotiated as such a speed where the tires only have contact with the wave peaks, not the troughs, you get a smooth ride. while filed at the back of mind, another maxim taught/learned during the School of Mines summer field camp — “driving on a dirt road is like driving on ball bearings.” suddenly that mushy feeling with handling. hmmm. slow down. damn. a flat. the fourth this summer. good thing yesterday I had replaced the previous spare which had a 3-inch slash from an unknown source. the current flat tire has a similar gash. changing it as fast as possible, damnation, get covered with the fine pale beige dust. twiLight somewhere shortly off, and another 25 miles to go before getting to the locked-gate/trailhead. I had to think hard whether to continue without a spare or turn around and get back to paved life. with a uncertain heart, I went ahead, trundling along at no more than 5 mph. well, at least it gives a nice view of the passing scenery. consequently, I didn’t get to the gate until well after sunset. there were a couple other cars. there was a hard breeze blowing though with the air around 4% relative humidity, it didn’t feel as cold as it actually was, but it was plunging fast. the daily fluctuation can easily be 40 degrees F (30 C). ground cloth (a heavy black plastic sheet), three back-packing sleeping pads, the wool poncho from Colombia, bivouac sack, down sleeping bag, sheet sack, pillow, down vest, and fleece jacket. after a quick dinner of re-heated pasta from the night before, I crawl in, leaving a small slit to watch the stars through. only just warm enough. over-tired from the drive and the altitude, stunned awake by the stellar intensity, hardly sleep, catching a few scattered Perseids. I’ve not seen stars like this in years. this particular location, aside from the modest amount of air pollution from the rest of California to the west, is as dark as can be found in the lower 48 states. that and being up at high altitude. the stars were not positioned as in a dome of sky. rather, they appeared without perspective, nor were they simply pasted, flat on a black background. they appeared full and with depth and an obvious shading of dark matter obscuring the center of the Milky Way. enough overall Light to see easily. I had the feeling of plunging forward into them, clearly manifest as a space, a cosmos that I was floating into, chill wind flushing any illusions of being on a planet. flying despite the gravity of the chunk of rock pressing against my back.

posted
  • place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

right place at the right time

the Solstice, in Echo Park. what more to ask?

walking upstream in Pool Creek Canyon above the abandoned ranch. cross one branch of that major fault, and there the creek is, totally spring fed, gushing from a sand bank in the center line of that huge fault. continue up the canyon in the dry wash. find a cave with a crude lean-to fashioned in it. hung with clothes, boots, and other items. old, very old. at least 50 years, perhaps 75. on the wall are a couple rock paintings. the clothes are working ranch clothes, the rock paintings appear to be authentic. I do not disturb anything, but am very conscious that my boots are making footprints in the sand floor. continuing up the arroyo, the canyon is defined by subtle and massive structural essences of the rock. on the uplifted side of the fault, the underlying limestone shows in the wash. the down-thrown side is at least 1000 feet lower. dramatic geology, good location for field mapping exercises.

sense a mountain lion at one point, the sage is often taller than my head, so, walking through deep brush, scrambling over rockfalls, peering into the numerous caves formed in the eroded sandstone. shooting many images. this is one of the best walks taken in the area. with plenty of cool places to stop, even in the vibrating mid-day zenith of the Solstice sun — overhangs, caves, some Douglas Fir trees, large old junipers, and areas of over-hung canyon wall, rising a few hundred feet above. the absolute depth is about 800-1000 feet, perhaps a bit more. I do not go as far as I can, but stop for 30 minutes to remove fox-tail burrs from pants, socks, and boot liners, where they are beginning to drill into my skin.

Loki does not accompany me.

we later swim/wade upstream to the Green/Yampa confluence and explore. the Yampa seems a few weeks yet too strong to cross. the current is strong even in the hip-deep areas, making a perfect speed for swimming a hard workout in place. the flow of the Yampa is around 2000 (cubic feet per second, cfs), it was twice that at the beginning of the month (see the USGS water data site). in May it can reach up to 20000 cfs on rare occasions — with good snowpack and rapidly increasing spring temps. the Green is half that, and does not vary from around 900 cfs because of the Flaming Gorge Dam. there are a pair of beavers who have found a sheltered cove to hang out in, noshing on aspens up to five inches in diameter which they have cut down and dragged to the river, leaving strange markings in the sand whilst doing so.

the previous day, coming down from the Uinta Mountains, we pass the monstrous phosphate mine which has modified a significant chunk of the south side of the Uintas. I continue work on the Domination of Landscape series to be uploaded later. everywhere in the west is plenty of material for this project. unfortunately.

posted
  • place: Ukiah, California

OHV

Ready to vacate the camp ground: the omens and portents are not good.

Bbbbbrrrrrrrraaaaaaapapapapapapapapa, brapppapapapapapaaaaaaa.

Nothing like the amplified throb of hydrocarbon explosion to go to sleep by and to wake up by. Camping in a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) OHV (Off-Highway Vehicle) area. The premise is simple, the social system has generated devices, machines, both two-wheeled and four that allow a single driver to mount somewhat like a horse, and to ride at speed on rugged and steep terrain. For entertainment. (Note: three-wheeled machines were banned from production 25 years ago because of the vast toll of injuries and deaths which ensued as a fault of the basic design). The word entertainment is key. It is absolutely true, straddling one of these machines, with hydro-carbon explosions vibrating the body, landscape rushing by a high speed. The body transforms itself into the body of a god (or goddess). Speed and flight, and the power to conquer the land makes one a lesser though very carnal deity. It’s great fun. The wider world is narrowed down to a small slice of the road ahead and some limited peripheral vision that is otherwise masked with the (state-mandated) helmet. The system narrows to the challenge of moving forward along a pathway (state-defined, in this case, with designations for beginner, intermediate, and expert, like a ski area), maintaining forward motion and lateral balance while negotiating the shifts in speed and orientation. Essentially an immersive video-game experience. Back to the virtual. Hearing is both muted in the helmet, but also assaulted by the viciously loud hydrocarbon explosions happening with minimal attenuation between the legs, touch is overwhelmed by the vibrations of hands, holding onto the handlebars (feeling reduced by gloves) and actions reduced to wrist rotations for accelerating, and gripping for braking. Sight, limited by the helmet. Smell coming through a nose filter, and otherwise, smell and taste dominated by the grit of dust that chokes everything. This is circumscribed by my definition of virtual as that which entails an attenuation of sensual input to the body-system.

It’s a holiday weekend, one for remembering the dead, fallen heroes, and the reasons that nation-states exist. The right to bear arms under any circumstances.

A radio blasts into the night as soon as the working folks arrive late on the Friday evening for the three-day weekend. Motors are tuned, beer is drunk, laughter and shouting echoes around the local space. The local space is a mis-en-scene, a tableau. The trees are decorations to be cut for fire, nails inserted into and chopped with hatchets because they are there, extruding from what is taken simply for painted or projected backdrops.

The camp ground is, as darkness falls, a backdrop for yet another kind of entertainment to take place. The BLM has posted a regulations sign-board, but it is the victim of target shooting with large-gauge shot-guns. Most of the regulations are unreadable, peppered with holes leaving letters, words, whole sentences unreadable. No shooting so far this weekend yet, but it’s sure to happen. Our campsite has a mound of big red 12-gauge shotguns shells, spent, under one tree, and several hands full of high-power rifle shells of a variety of calibers scattered around. And every once in a while one sees side-arm shells. Spent ammunition. Broken glass, beer bottle tops. Past remembrance-of-the-dead weekends. Celebrated by shooting into the air, shooting the trees, shooting anything that looks non-human. Most of the time.

The ambient audio mix also contains material from the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas compound.

(stereo audio, 12.4 mb)

There is nothing that does not flow forth from the Dharma Realm, and nothing that does not return to the Dharma Realm.

bbbbbrrrrrrrraaaaaaapapapapapapapapa, brapppapapapapapaaaaaaa.

posted
  • 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”

posted
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Waag

the view from the living room. the Waag Society has one set of offices in the building to the right, on Nieuwmarkt, it’s the oldest secular structure in Amsterdam. this complex includes the Teatrum Anatomicum the best-known space to public dissections…

more “Waag”

posted
  • place: en route Livermore - Kelso, California

next year

post wild-fire, Tesla Road, Diablo Range, California, August ©2006 hopkins/neoscenes.
post wild-fire, Tesla Road, Diablo Range, California, August ©2006 hopkins/neoscenes.

Hit the road, heading gradually south and east. Through the burned hills of the Diablo Range between Livermore and the Great Valley. Avoiding the main roads when possible, but spending most of the day at speeds too high, with death only a wrist-flick away. Here again in the Mojave. Fullness of stars. Moon will be up later. Tonight on the ground. Head exhausted after first the NYC trip and then the ISEA gig. Haven’t processed it all. And the short time need for employment. Prescott is a lousy base anyway for that.

Head exhausted with the whole last year. Need to clear it out and start a new life. Suggestions about going to OZ surface again, after the virtual contact and the contact with various kiwis and ‘strains in the last couple weeks. hmmm. That or Canada. Okay, heading for bed. Letting granite grit cradle my brain for a half-solar-cycle.

Great visit with the Pulsar Road crew. Left five of Kevin’s paintings on loan. Took the rest with.

The day before Loki turns 14. The separation is painful, especially with no clear plan for the next months except for heading to Colorado and to Missouri. Putting job applications in. Following up on the UC-Davis opening, and on. Spend the next week finalizing everything in storage. Keeping out what’s necessary. Trundling the rest off not to be seen for an indeterminate length of time.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

H5N1

there is no privacy at the speed of Light is a project hosted on ORF Kunstradio and authored by Bernhard Loibner and Tom Sherman aka Nerve Theory. It explores contemporary be-ing and the impact of social and biological entities on that being. Fragment No. 23 is the latest installment:

We live in a world of strangers. Because more and more of us choose to live in cities, we find ourselves living in a world of strangers. We find privacy in the city, and loneliness. As we gain autonomy and our sense of individualism grows, it is more and more difficult to convince others that we are trustworthy. There are two ways we can prove our worth, with credentials and through ordeals. Credentials include credit cards and drivers licenses, and educational certificates. We have identity tags like social security and passport numbers. To supplement our credentials we must submit our physical bodies for measurement and examination. We must establish our reputations through ordeals. Photographs are taken. We are asked to take drug tests for certain jobs, say a hair strand drug test or a simple saliva test. We are asked to place our hands on devices that verify our identity through hand geometry analysis. We are instructed to stare into video cameras for iris scans. These ordeals have become common in many aspects of our personal lives. We live in a world of strangers and it has become increasingly difficult to establish and maintain our reputations. In this world we still rely on personal, instinctive judgment — the way a person looks and smells, the sound of their voice, and if they can look us in the eye. The way a person moves or responds to our touch still tells us a lot. But our intuitive skills only tell us so much. What kind of music does this stranger like? What are her favorite movies? Does he eat meat? Before we have sex or exchange body fluids we must determine the probability of various kinds of infections. Credentials are important, but ordeals are usually necessary to close the deal.

posted
  • place: Curecanti Creek, Gunnison National Forest, Colorado

boot burning

close to the end of the month. another one come by the time anything is uploaded. what would it require to upload from here? military support would allow it, or a significant chunk of cash. $20K? subscription to a satellite data connection in addition to the base unit. satellite might be limited by available sky in this narrow canyon. and data speeds are probably still at modem pace without elite service levels.

observing the sky, rocks, soil, flowers, other plants, beaver ponds, creek, what else. clean up the camping space. people sometimes seem so piggish. Winchester 30-30 shells, new silver brass, litter one spot. hard to imagine folks just reeling off rounds at such a rate there, what are they shooting at? I pretend I am a child, and play in the creek, re-routing a branch of it to pass directly below the campsite. drain another area which is swampy, and remove several contiguous rock fire-rings. make a nice fire — using some of the large logs that are left from the previous campers. in the tradition that Loki and I started in Crestone one year — a single large log makes a swell fire which will keep legs warm through a long and late evening.

and, in a special action, spent boots and half-gloves are sacrificed to the air via fire. last time was in Tornio, Finland, when boots were set adrift in the spring melt-water swollen Tornionjoki back in 2000 or so. time to retire this pair, though they were slightly usable, soles were worn through on the right side and the standard tear along the left inside of the right ball was in full display, and good for mountain-biking in that the smooth soles slipped in and out of the toe-clips compared to my remaining foot-coverings. the boots were bought in Flagstaff back in 1993(?) on a return drive from Colorado around the holidays, and when Loki was a tiny tyke. those boots were made for walking, as they say, keeping my feet happy on the way around the world.

posted
  • place: Soap Creek, Gunnison National Forest, Colorado

scale of impact

The scale of impact may be described using a material framework in a Cartesian coordinate system. For example, bringing by car a plastic container full of toxic chemicals — better yet, a bottle of water. Leaving this container behind, we have effectively inserted a certain amount of energy into the local system (as defined by a scalar coordinate system) in the form of an abundance of liquid water and the hydrocarbon container itself — a very concentrated form of hydrocarbon energy with a certain threshold value for the liberation of that energy. The threshold value changes over time as the container is slowly decomposed (to compose and decompose) through the availability of UV energy which, at peak dayLight hours, is high enough to just barely exceed the threshold. Whether or not the bottle appears to alter the local environment depends on the speed of liberation of the energy. Or perhaps it doesn’t depend of the speed of liberation. The change in the environment takes place upon the introduction of the object (material energy system) into that particular location. The liberation of energy from the introduced material energy system begins immediately. Plastics release free radical organics all the time in their inevitable breakdown process (smell nalgene vs pvc vs polyethylene, for example). Temporal rates of release do not always scale to the eye of the casual observer. The intent observer, aside from changing the energy state of the system through the act of observation, notices smaller and smaller changes. (Question: in Quantum, (how) does the observer affect the total energy state of the observer/observed system? — another words, does the observer actually introduce an extra energy (source) into the system, or what?) Global warming will evidence itself in an accumulation of relatively small scale observations which will need to be correlated to indicate a larger scale shift in the global system to the casual observer. With observation itself as a rapidly diminishing individual function, (being replaced largely by collective and heavily mediated observation), it will be difficult to make the connection between small and large. Although technically there are large numbers of detail-observers (in the form of specialist scientists), the structure of the social system effectively keeps these observers and their consequent observations separated (by the rigidity of specialty vs trans-disciplinarity). It will take a trans-disciplinary visionary to draw many isolated threads together to make clear the changes necessary in the global system for the mediated-reality pseudo-observer.

Wha’? Who cares? You’re speaking obsequious drivel!

Nawp, just fishing for basic principles of human presence in the world. Impact.

So far only one other vehicle seen on the national forest road today. A 4×4 that went in and came back out from the trailhead in about an hour. Otherwise, watching ravens catch thermals and play around the welded-tuff-over-breccia hoodoos across the Soap Creek valley. And collecting spent brass cartridge cases that litter the ground.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

development rant

The local controversy around widening Williamson Valley Road continues. It is a microcosm of the more general issue of development in the southwest of the US. Arizona has one of, if not the fastest growth rate of any state and the Prescott – Prescott Valley – Chino Valley “Tri-city” area is near the fastest in the state. When the folks moved here and built their retirement home (purely my father’s impetus — the clear-sky suitability for his astronomy), theirs was the second or third home on the street, and the view — a 200-degree panorama that reached 100 miles to the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff — was long and relatively free of any spurious Lighting at night. Williamson Valley was still populated by several large ranch spreads, and the road was narrow and twisting as it approached Iron Springs Road and the fringe of northern Prescott proper. more “development rant”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

hey man!

a look back into the 1960’s with some Peter-Max-like artwork from Loki. groovin’! now about playing two copies of the Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd on two turntables (yes, vinyl!), and playing with the calibration speeds. now that’s a trip…

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave the kids alone
Hey teacher leave us kids alone

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

what burns?

From Armin Medosch in a call for papers to WAVES – electromagnetic waves as material and medium of art (Acoustic Space Issue #6)

Pantha Rei – everything flows

Radio waves occur naturally. Society puts the biggest emphasis on the ability of waves to carry signals. Radio, television and mobile telephony are some of the most widely used applications. The worlds fixation on content and its socio-political implications makes us forget the waves themselves. The proposed exhibition takes a look at the physical properties of waves. Waves are considered to be ‘immaterial’ from the point of view of visual art. However, light is just a specific band in the spectrum of electromagnetic waves. Some of the properties of waves change according to their frequency and wavelength. It is worthwhile looking at those properties and exploring their implications for art. Wave-like phenomena play an important role in various aspects of reality, from the physical consistency of the world (audio-, air-, water-waves) to Kondratiev-cycles and the carbon-cycle (the storage and release of CO2 by oceans and forests).
more “what burns?”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Jón Gudjónsson

Jon, Eyjafjördur, Iceland, June ©1993 hopkins/neoscenes.
Jon, Eyjafjördur, Iceland, June ©1993 hopkins/neoscenes.

Loki’s grandfather, Jón Gudjónsson, passed away this past night in his sleep, at the nursing home in Reykjavík. My former father-in-law. This, an image of him from 1993 when he still had a fishing boat and would put out in summer from Hrísey sometimes for a day or more, fishing for cod. I was fortunate to accompany him on several occasions, running the hook lines, piloting the boat back to harbor while he cut hundreds of filets. He had a seaman’s eyes, Light blue with a far-seeing squint. He navigated simply by watching the water and any nearby landmarks. Whenever standing onshore, he rocked from side to side, feeling the sea after 50 years of fishing. While the word jolly is overused for Santa Claus, it would apply to Jón, with a boisterous and quick laugh, no mistaking when he entered a room. He was an expert making landi, the garage-made Icelandic hooch with a kick. He brewed it to 95% alcohol and then watered it down a bit for mere humans to consume. Pure, potent, no hangover. And hárfisk (dried filets) which he supplied the whole family — he had a whole production facility in the back of the tar-paper cabin on the island — along with a noisy fan assembly to speed the drying. He was the master of repairing things with whatever was available in the moment. Enough to get through the next winter. I considered him to be one of my few connections to ‘authentic’ Icelandic traditions. Growing up in the times when famine was not far away, moving to the big city during the WWII boom, and then capitalizing on the purely Icelandic boom brought on by the international law increasing national coastal (fishing) control to 200 miles. He owned and captained a large trawler for some years. He could cat-nap anywhere at any time, even after several cups of jet-fuel black coffee. On the sea, he admitted to me once that he had conversations with the seagulls. He kept a weather log book which he would make regular entries in the most beautiful handwriting, with big tough hands that never saw gloves ever when gutting fish for hours in freezing temperatures.

I remember one late spring, accompanying him north to prepare the Arnarberg 101 (his boat) for the summer — scraping and painting, fixing the engine and autopilot, and other tasks. First thing, however, on arriving by ferry to Hrísey was to make the rounds, visiting the locals, he knew everybody. house after house of coffee, cakes, pancakes, and landi. Oh my gosh, my stomach was trashed after several hours of that. When no one else was around, he would mostly speak English, but when there was a family gathering he would imperiously demand that everyone use Icelandic with me.

He will be missed by all who knew him.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

V2

tuning in to Lev Manovich‘s lecture/discussion at V2. last time I saw Lev was at my flat in Helsinki in 2000, I made dinner for him, Tapio, and Susanna. His topic is “scale effects.” Stephen Kovats, a curator at V2, sent an email invitation to myself and a handful of other folks who frequently participate in such live/online events. it is a non-standard way to participate, for sure, watching and hearing the event via an audio/video stream, and reacting to that via an IRC channel that is projected into the lecture space. there is much more that one could do to push this format for live interaction, but it usually ends up being rather mundane and polite.

sotto voce: after self data-mining. computers scaling social forms. (dialectic between increasing quantity, size, creates new effects. examples Wikipedia. scaling in visual culture. one million hours of programming online. (BBC?) company in San Diego makes 6 giga-pixel images. (factors — image size, data volume, podcasting, moblogs) Bruce Sterling, the future. ubiquitous computing. media ecology. listing newest, hippest pop technologies. What about the societies in which this technological consumerism takes place in? medical imaging – PET, MRI, CT. graphical browsers took off. 30-40 years of media history. What about the impact of scaling up of existing media? What is tradition of quantitative effect scaling. very much based on a Cartesian system. Mcluhan’s suggestion that increasing of speed changes the social system. With scale being a parameter for comparison of media implementations. Speed: processing speed relating to visual presentation. algorithm already developed in Durer’s time. so, scaling causes the development of a “whole new media”… new visualizations important to contemporary science. resolution yardstick. but the available visual cortex (field of vision) can cover a small fragment of the image at any one time. redefining new media. normal media flattens the world, then surveillance. 4k digital Cinema. adam says it’s all smoke and mirrors. I think it seems to be using conventional metrics — based in Cartesian worldviews? temporal, spatial, compression. the collective. “as much data as we want.”

the parallel irc discussion (see below) leaves much space for wondering at Lev’s success. there seems a close linkage between text production and influence, something I have mentioned many times in other places. he made careful note that he is working on two new books and is proceeding at a rate of 2500 words a day. seems linear, quantitative, and retro. hmmmm. but it works within the attention economy.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

start: time:money:energy

lines of the hand, with the skin thinning, turning to trapezoidal textures that shimmer differently than they used to do. cool tonight, here at altitude, in the dry west, when the sun goes, warmth goes as well. remembering the nights in the desert, so many times. no matter the heat of the day, the night gives the heat back to the darkness of the sky. only in deep summer, is there more heat delivered than can be reflected away, so that only at the null hour, a time before dawn, does the air loosen itself of the burden of heat. but as soon as fall comes, with a couple days of cloud cover, the night air is an empty chill. more “start: time:money:energy”

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

look homeward

And it was this that awed him — the weird combination of fixity and change, the terrible moment of immobility stamped with eternity in which, passing life at great speed, both the observer and the observed seem frozen in time. There was one moment of timeless suspension when the land did not move, the train did not move, the slattern in the doorway did not move, he did not move. It was if God had lifted his baton sharply above the endless orchestration of the seas, and the eternal movement had stopped, suspended in the timeless architecture of the absolute. — Thomas Wolfe

posted
  • place: The Mission, San Francisco, California

places, sounds, words

portrait, Sirpa, Mission 17 Gallery, San Francisco, California, June 2005

make a blitz into downtown to meet Sirpa and check out her exhibition in the Mission. we met nearby at her friend Alice’s home and drive down to the gallery, the Mission 17 Gallery. parking is a hassle, with my boat-length pick-up. not used to driving it in compact urban settings. walk down Mission, thinking that this setting is almost identical to Brixton in London when I was there with Pete. urban complexity, noise, confusing information flows, mixed cultural impulses, chaotic surface intersections and orientations.
more “places, sounds, words”

posted

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”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

vector attention

fortune cookie:

Be satisfied with what you already own. lucky numbers 16, 18, 21, 25, 29, 45. learn Chinese: Mayor = Shi-zhang

talk to Anthony on the phone, catching up with the poet hissef’, subject launches from Heidegger to Kennan (see following), to Paul Celan through to az’s own individual efforts at poetic production.

The automobile has turned out to be, by virtue of its innate and inalterable qualities, the enemy of community generally. Wherever it advances, neighborliness and the sense of community are generally impaired. — George F. Kennan

from a longer article at Transportation Alternatives. clearly another stab evidencing the general principle that every technological implementation costs something on a scale of alienation. the obverse of destruction of community. I place the destruction back at that granular level: where the particular techno-social implementation splits the Self from the Other by some means. the simplest example is the television, where the attention vector, a metric of the strength of personal connection, is generally directed towards the mediated/socialized flow, and away from, or at least perpendicular to the attention vector of the proximal Other. it would be better to watch the teevee via a macro lens as the media is reflected in the eye of the Other. or, of course, just turn it off and do the face-to-face.

all day today, hypersonic craft rip through the skies, squinting without sunglasses hardly finds any of them, they are distinguished only by their small size, invisibility, odd flight trajectories, and the sonic delay related to speed and altitude, that and the sheer volume. to be under attack from one of them would be fearsome even with a rational understanding of what was going on. it’s not common that they joy-ride around here, but neither is it unknown.

posted
  • place: Rösrath, Germany

Chief One-Rock

the iconic presence of Einstein is brought into mythological format with the advent of the 100th anniversary of the “miraculous year” of 1905 — the International Einstein Year along with the somewhat desperate hyping of the World Year of Physics tries to connect to a public which largely ignores science in the blinding speed of shopping.

tripping along with setting up the rss feeding frenzy. feeding. suggests. consuming. once again. media production, and its consumption.

Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality. Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements instead of systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic. — Michel Foucault

posted
  • place: Rösrath, Germany

fearlessness

the speed of religious innovation. words to wake up with from a sleep of a thousand dreams and groping around for the pathway. these two thoughts come to me: the despair I face is of my own making; and fearlessness is paramount. it is always this internal relation to the world, where change is framed as something accomplished by introspection, not in relation with the surrounding presence of spirit. although there should be no distinction between the internal spirit and the external spirit. they are One. but connection to that dynamic flow remains elusive and transitory in the confusing rush of noise that the social brings. (how this sounds an anti-social position, but this is not the case, merely to recognize the effect of social structures (as they enhance material survivability) on the individual.)

interstitial awareness, and Brakhage’s rise to the surface of my consciousness through meeting certain Others. the sheer animated viscerality of his expressions that so activated my fascination. the further individual creative expressions/projections can be stripped of the restrictions of abstracted and impressed social channeling, the closer the impulse comes to pure energy.

The light of power is waning. The eyes of individual subjectivity cannot adapt to mere holes in a mask, which are the eyes of those fog-bound in shared illusion. The individual’s point of view must prevail over false collective participation. In total self-possession, reach society with the tentacles of subjectivity and remake everything, starting with yourself. The reversal of perspective is what is positive in negativity, the fruit which will burst out of the old world’s bud. — Raoul Vaneigem

posted
  • place: en route Reykjavík - Akureyri, Iceland

rok and roll

rok it is. whole gale in English, as opposed to strong gale, fresh gale, or moderate gale. grounded. no flights north today, most likely. so it goes. the rok brings restless sleep and no relaxation, the flux of energy is so intense. wind speeds between 40 and 50 meters/second in some places. flights north are canceled all day until 1800 when they mobilize a 757 to do the hop. luck out with a business-class seat, at the front, the first place to go in a downing. next to me sits Brad, I think his name is, a basketball recruit for the Akureyri team. all the way from Connecticut. his first time in Iceland. says it was the worst plane flight he’s ever had. I told him he was lucky we were landing in the dark, as the sight of the mountains that the plane threads through on the way into the fjord are hairy on a good day. in a rok, the whole machine is bucking, thumping, and revving like a Huey under fire over the Mekong. bless me, father, for I have sinned… whewsh. and a 30-minute wait for my bag, and a further 30-minute wait for a taxi. the entire local infrastructure groaning under the stress of a full 757’s load of bodies itching to get outta R’vík and back to winter-enshrouded northlands.

posted
  • place: Akureyri, Iceland

fallen leaf

So sister Janet gets online with her Fallen Leaf webspace (no longer around) after some earlier attempts. Good job! here’s a pic of her newest puppy, Fireskye’s BonChance Bella Mia, or “Bella” for short. Judge Denise Dean awarded her Best Puppy in a recent show!

This life is all checkered with pleasures and woes,
That chase one another like waves of the deep,
Each brightly or darkly, as on wave it flows,
Reflecting our eyes, as they sparkle or weep.
— Sir Thomas Moore