posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

going to the mat

It’s difficult to write these days. Internal monologues are focused on figuring out how to pack up life asap. It’s a bit strange to say that the past four-plus years is the longest I’ve lived in one place continuously since leaving my parents home at 17 y.o. And further, it’s one of the few periods of time that I have had *all* my belongings in one place and (mostly) out of boxes. The majority of my adult life, my stuff has been in a storage unit somewhere—New Jersey, Prescott, Golden, Boulder—or in someone’s garage or so. Uff. Packing the entire archive back up seems absurd as it was hardly accessed in the time it was out of boxes. A useless pile of detritus. Why, why, why subject myself to the ignominy and energy-waste of maintaining something that I’m the only one who has an interest in it?

Now Reading: Absorbing the epic six-volume autobiography, Min Kamp, from Norwegian, Karl Ove Knausgård. At Zander’s recommendation, and then, once I started and realized that I actually was in the same locations at the same times—Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Oslo—as Karl Ove back when I was spending a fair amount of time in Norway in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A compelling read.

Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love. Translated by Don Bartlett. 1st Archipelago books edition. Vol. 2. 6 vols. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 573.

I recently checked in with Julia, my former CGS intern. She’s a Mines (hydrogeology) graduate, who has, wonderfully, found a shared pathway to follow her bliss. She and her boyfriend, Torin, also a Mines alumni, have taken their connection with yoga to a higher level, gaining the necessary credentials for teaching and are planning to go international with that sooner than later. They have also started a YouTube channel—Wellbeing Cafe—already with a huge number of yoga routines and a variety of other material. Very cool to see this transition.

Somewhat disturbing to me, though, is that part of this personal evolution is almost forced to take place within the sphere of social media, especially YouTube, given the oligarchic control that it exerts on any and all users. That and the insertion of ads that cannot be cancelled or avoided—all of them utterly useless and annoying—until the channel receives a minimum number of subscribers (1,000). At that point the channel owners can at least select when the ad is played. Otherwise, one will show up in the middle of a yoga sequence or more often. I was stuck with one that played for ten minutes. Finding an independent pathway to socio-economic viability is challenging for their generation. They could have gone full-engineering and been working in a (potentially) stifling ‘regular’ job with deluxe cash flows. But they are cognizant of the lives of some of their cohort who are extremely unhappy (and unhealthy!), coasting along on that trajectory. Given the wider-scale complexity of what is ‘going on’ in late-stage Empire, best to work at basic life-skills like body-health, psycho-spiritual development, consumption habits, community-building, and look to develop trajectories that are beyond the reach of Empire (if that is possible in this new-ish multi-lateral oligarch-and-authoritarian-driven global power struggle).

Later, I juxtapose those assessments with the swirl of jagged thoughts and impressions that are filling my consciousness: monkey-brain on amphetamines, faugh. Complexity increasing, logarithmic, with age (of Self and Empire), while neuronal synapses are dulled, blank. Is this what life *is*, or what it becomes when attention is shredded by too much stuff? Packing boxes, why hold so tightly to this stuff when it will likely sit in those boxes for a long time. Possibly for the existing life-time! Having is a form of suffocation, burdened by excretions of other lives, but mostly my own. Giving is an exhalation, from the deep belly, giving inspiration to the cosmos.

Venus is high and brilliant in the evening, Saturn much less so in the sunset’s glare, Jupiter, Mars high with the waxing, near full Luna, invisible-but-present Uranus. I regularly take a late night stroll around the property before bed, no matter how cold. Waking the deer snoozing in the openness, their greenish-yellow headLight eyes blazing in my headlamp. First encounter, the eye pairs rise vertically, then, after staring, frozen, as the LED supernova waxes, they bolt to the tree line or across the street to a neighbor’s yard. Occasionally, a tinier pair of eyes, one of several feral cats that are encountered, or, rarely, a fox or skunk. So far no encounters with the large carnivores that do frequent the area: bears and mountain lions. Much of the walk is without the headlamp on, and aside from the always-on brightest-Light-within-several-miles that my neighbor installed a year ago, it’s dark with the brilliant streak of the Milky Way in all its offset-rotational glory.

A 30-minute call with George, I feel rusty, awkward and jumbled. He and I never developed an audio tele-presence connection, given the logistics and expense back when. Our connection was forged across some immersive instances of intense f-2-f interaction. After those formative encounters at Mines and in Santa Monica in the early 1980s, and aside from one more f-2-f in 1989, it’s always been text. Hand-written or typed letters through the post, then email, and these days, texting. I wonder if we will ever cross physical paths again in this incarnation. Doubtful, especially when I remove myself from this nation, and head for another, though there are no guarantees of anything anywhere anymore.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

QoD

In the stead of the tedious roll-calling in my more formal university classes, I started to implement a Question of the Day process. At the beginning of the semester, at the start of each session, one student was asked come up with a question and pose it on the QoD form which then circulated around the room during the session, to be filled out as decided by each individual. I placed no restrictions on content, and one didn’t have to answer at all, but at least had to note presence.

This turned out to be a marvelous way to tap into individual/personal energies that students would typically not ‘reveal’ in a classroom setting. As the paper circulated, accumulating answers, it would travel slower and slower as students read prior answers and came up with their own. The process sparked both basic human connection as well as significant discussion on occasion, and on others, amusement. After a couple weeks of me assigning the Questioner, there were usually volunteers at the beginning of each session who had come up with something to query their peers with. Also interesting was the sheer variety of handwriting samples and forms of expression.

Question of the Day, Atlas2000, 25 April 2013, CU Boulder, Colorado.
Question of the Day, Atlas2000, 25 April 2013, CU Boulder, Colorado.
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  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

Enginn Gleypir Sólina

The English translation of this is Nobody Swallows the Sun, and it’s the title of a release of a couple of sound-art compositions by my friend, Icelandic artist, Magnús Pálsson. Adam Buffington started the label Mumbling Eye in 2021 featuring some of Magnus’ work: check out Enginn Gleypir Sólina on Bandcamp along with a second release, Gapassipi. And, back when I made a couple documentations of both he and Rod prepping in Maastricht for a performance in Berlin: a remix of that complexity.

(18:59, stereo audio, 46.3 mb)

The next step is for art to become mere smell or sound, phenomena which are visible or visual within the mind all the same. In this way, sound has a form and is an image. – Magnús Pálsson

Now a month after leaving the ‘regular’ job, conversations ensue within the personal network—Athens, Weimar, Helsinki, Vihti, Benin, Catania, Reykjavík, Forsbach, Bremen, Kiel, Maastricht, Salmon Arms, Vancouver, Boulder, Durango, Santa Fe, Denver—old friends, collaborators, former students, family. I am a bit surprised—and humbled—at how easy the dialogues pick up and seamlessly continue with the strong energies that they were long-rooted in from other times and places. It is deeply gratifying to have a confirmation of network dynamics as demonstrated by these wonderful Others: many more dialogues to come. Already learning much, and catching up on lives.

— an aside from the NY Times: the Anthropocene will remain an unofficial tag on our short-lived and messy presence: the geoscience community voted it down (more details in an article in Nature). In many ways it seemed to be yet another human conceit, naming an epoch after us, but, this is certainly not the end of the term in the popular hive-mind.

— and, finally, a bird’s drone’s eye view on location after one of the few Light snowfalls this winter. The smooth areas are the result of many days of weed-whacking throughout last year’s long and prolific weed-growing season. That’s the one advantage of drought, even the weeds are handicapped. Last year’s relatively heavy precipitation brought a profusion of chest-high invasives across the entire 13+ acre property that I could not successfully battle without access to full-on farming equipment. That level of capital I don’t have, I subsequently gave up.

The Surface Creek Road property, Cedaredge, Colorado, January ©2024 hopkins/neoscenes.
The center of the Surface Creek Road property, Cedaredge, Colorado, January ©2024 hopkins/neoscenes.
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Amurikan freedoms

I used to make this statement in the midst of discussions with my European students, when the subject of neoliberal geopolitics and personal freedoms surfaced:

  • to be gunned down in the streets
  • to be lonely
  • to shop

Has anything changed? eah.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

a very raw pedagogic generality

My international undergraduate and graduate students would often critically challenge/engage me on the content of whatever I was presenting, as well as (sometimes) even the form of the pedagogic encounter [all this tempered on occasion with excessive deference for the ‘professor’]. I learned a lot from them.

To begin with, my Amurikan students would frequently challenge me as to why should they have to extend any effort to learn; who was I to tell them what to do; and why should they be required show up at all to the pedagogic encounter; it was rare to have the fruits of a critical thought process emerge in what passed for (stultifyingly obtuse) discourse anchored firmly in cryptic language usage (think Palin) and pop media snippets (think any form of advertising being passed on as ‘information’).

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Ecosa Institute and more

Another interesting meeting this month — portending an engaged 2015 — this crossing with Antony “Tony” Brown, the founder of the Ecosa Institute. A possibility to collaborate or so, as they make a systems approach in their educational program that focuses on “regenerative” ecological design. They are on the verge of a major expansion of their mission as a result of a substantial philanthropic gift that allows for a new facility to be built in the Granite Dells. Tony founded the .org about fifteen years ago, and it’s a pity that I didn’t find them sooner than this week. Better late than never!

I’m still learning how to live in a small town. Can’t be a selective hermit. So, made a serious effort to ‘get out.’ Following my own advice to students — do everything [whups, got to change that — this was the original John Cage text — I did a remix on that]. Find the interesting people doing interesting things, one can hardly go wrong.

But it’s been difficult to do this reaching out with the Displace book running far over the allotted month of editing. Many ten-hour days sunk into that, and it’s not going to press until after the New Year now, I think. Mindaugas just sent the cover proof yesterday. These editing projects always run over. It’s rarely possible to estimate what effort it will take to make readable texts from unknown sources.

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The Machinic Structure of Institutions

What would a revolutionary academy be. It must, of course, have revolutionary aims; not just with respect to the academy itself, but with respect to the broader social world. At the level of its organization, it would have to have a different hierarchy than the existing one we find organized around administration, staff, tenured faculty, adjunct faculty, and students. Here we might think of Guattari’s La Borde. It would have to challenge the “star system” of the academy—while also honoring great accomplishments of thought and scholarship—refusing to restrict itself to, for example, the history of philosophy and masters, but rather functioning as a genuine site of new knowledge production rather than merely inherited tradition. Somehow the course would have to navigate between the transmission of existing knowledge and the creation of new knowledge. It would have to produce graduates that don’t simply reproduce the existing system of neoliberal capital and privilege, but that form new ways of life. Finally, it would have to navigate these issues of livability, of being able to find a sustainable place in the world when exiting the institution.
Bryant, L.R., 2014. The Machinic Structure of Institutions: A Report on the Revolutionary Academy. Larval Subjects.



Somewhat conservative in the fact that it doesn’t dispense with institution completely, but otherwise a solid, pragmatic call (on ears that are packed, sloughing, with the (reified!) waxen dross of normalcy). bwah…

posted
  • place: Glade Park, Colorado

expectations and deliverables

It is strange that we expect students to learn, yet seldom teach them anything about learning. We expect students to solve problems, yet seldom teach them about problem solving. And, similarly, we sometimes require students to remember a considerable body of material, yet seldom teach them the art of memory. It is time we made up for this lack…

Norman, D., 1980. Cognitive engineering and education. In D. T. Tuma & F. Reif, eds. Problem solving and education: issues in teaching and research. Hillsdale, N.J: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Ain’t this the truth! The necessary tools and ways of going are hardly addressed in the big schema of mo-dern education. period.

posted
  • place: Kiel, Germany

conversation with Alexandra

Have an interesting Skpye conversation with Alexandra last evening after getting home from Nadja’s place (missed the damn bus, or, more correctly, was given the wrong info from the KVG website on the timing of the return bus ride — there were no buses running by the time I left. So, a long walk over the Holtenauer Straße Bridge that spans the Ostsee Kanal, and down FeldStraße to DüppelStraße.) At any rate, Alexandra seems quite sharp, though participatory/collaborative online situations present new territory for her. I’ll be keen to see what she produces during her residency regarding VisitorsStudio (especially after deploying it with my Advanced Digital Art students at CU-Boulder this past semester to a very poor reception). Alexandra wants to explore the idea of open-sourcing the platform and perhaps employing more current social networking paradigms in the overall interface design. We’ll see. Not sure that either of those aspects would have made the platform more compelling for my students, actually not sure anything would have compelled them to be less conservative and more creatively present and engaged. Cattle prod anyone? Nah, but whether it was the particular local/immediate context or whether it was evidence of a wider crisis in the US is not so clear. Probably a combination of the two. Whatever, it was disheartening to the extreme.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

time for closing

Classes begin to wind down/wind up: finals this week. Ending dialogues and monologues.

At the moment, sitting in the final for the History and Theory of Digital Art. The final consists of a collaborative effort to modify the general class notes into the ultimate ‘cheat sheet’ for a final examination on the History and Theory of Digital Art. The collective notes accumulated through the efforts of a different pair of students each class session using a single google doc to take notes on. Among other issues, this obviated the HUGE distraction of ancillary web-surfing in class. And it provides an excellent exercise of collaborative knowledge-building (which should be the standard for learning facilitation at this point in time). The down side was the lack of coherent group synergy which stems from at least two factors — irregular attendance and me not enforcing the ‘dialogue’ assignments weekly (which is related to the attendance issue). Turns out that many of the dialogue situations were arbitrarily skipped by students, and so the effect that worked well in the consistency of the MiT class failed in the instance of this class. Inconsistent attendance is a primary sign of the lack of importance of the class, that it is not compelling, or that there are more pressing things than school to be engaged with.

It was self-determined how to distribute tasks on what/how to address the upgrade. The first hour was divvied up, one class day for each person to mod. Then the second hour is used for anyone to work on any part of the text. The balance of the class session is used to clean-up.

The result? Is it a proper cheat sheet? What is collaborative knowledge generation anyway?

Why did these two art classes proceed so poorly compared to similar ones that I taught a decade ago at CU. Are my standards or expectations too high? Not high enough? Especially in comparison to the “Meaning of Information Technology” group: night and day. I need to have smart and engaged students to establish and sustain an energized dialogue. The challenge of immature students, dis-engaged, dis-interested — divested from their own learning process by the structural violence of the system — may be lessened depending on their raw precocity, but in the end, they do need to step up and away from passive learning paradigms. The problems were definitely enmeshed in my own response to a broad lack of attentiveness — a reactionary trait of which I am guilty. My response is to simply pull away incrementally from what is normally a condition of open sharing.

As per usual, every class evolves its own characteristic vibe. Thank god the cumulative total vibe is in the positive. Else learning facilitation would be a non-starter.

A fundamental question: Is this a systemic thing, versus a localized immediate problem? That’s all I can do, ask the questions, and see about discovering actionable intelligence. And change conditions when possible, and relinquish control when necessary.

posted
  • place: The Bubble, Colorado

a TAZ is born?

Meaning of Information Technology:

dateline, Boulder [AP]

Students take control of classroom, locking door, and start teaching each other Chinese, making cut-out collages, doing homework, puzzles, editing music, watching “Portlandia”, and, most of all, talking to each other, interacting. Beautiful to watch. Nice to participate in. Didn’t record the results, but hey, you had to be there!. The vacuum of the Boulder Bubble is reversed and instead turned into a high-energy source.

posted

still teaching, or what?

Indeed, yes, apparently still teaching. Spring Break lost to a bug that flattened numerous other folks before it finally settled in my chest for two weeks, faugh. It was robust enough to consume my entire break, setting me behind a solid two weeks on all the tasks that I needed to get done before expatriating in five weeks.

Teaching proceeds unevenly. Half the time it feels like baby-sitting as the art students seem to resist most openings to expressive potential. They seem to resent being prodded into a space of the unknown — am I pushing too hard, not enough? The dynamic of this resistance is hard to parse. Do they simply not recognize the opening? Or is it fear, or simply an inability to expand into the dimension of open creative situation that I am facilitating? The fear isn’t one of those palpable, sweaty things, but more a deeper and amorphous presence. It appears to thrive in the university art/art history department — although it is perceptible elsewhere, as soon as one begins to look — but not as such a dominant presence as in the digital art classes (versus the Meaning of Information Technology classes which cross disciplinary lines dramatically). Why does it have a home in an area of activity, a ‘discipline,’ that should be largely free from such negative emotion? One adjunct colleague who is leaving this university for a far better situation at one in Texas seems to get the students moving, but he’s been here for a ten-year stretch and has settled on a process that takes into consideration whatever it is that is going on here. It’s the same thing that is feeling so completely oppressive for me. After a decade away from US academia, this past year as CU-Boulder has brought my confidence in teaching (more accurately, the facilitation of learning) to a grinding dead end. Maybe that’s the problem: facilitation rather than dictation. What gives?

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

University of Colorado – Boulder, US / TAM:Meaning of Information Technology :: Aug-Dec.12

group portrait, TAM:MiT class, Boulder, Colorado, December 2012

Caitlin Ammerman, Shane Bauldauf, Hannah Black, Graham Bowman, Kelly Brichta, Sam Carnes, Sam Carrothers, Alyx Chapman, Blake Clapp-Lee, Anna Cook, Dakota Cotton, Sammie Elvove, Lulu Eyears, Jon Giehl, Michelle Harrison, Becca Herschorn, Scott Hodges, Laura Kauffman, Caroline Kennedy, Leigh Marr, Vahid Mazdeh, Davis McClure, Mallorie McDowell , Katie McMenamin, Stephen Motta, Harper Nelson, Daniel Rankin, Melanie Rogers, Peter Sawers, Betsy Schiel, Florencia Selasco, Mitchell Sellinger, David Stanek, Maggie Still, Madeleine Towne, Hannah Tuell, Kelly Turgeon, Patrick Vargas, Mitchell Wolfe

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

Art in Science and Technology (ArtiST)

By pure happenstance, (I was on the CSM alumni page for something), I saw the announcement for a three-day conference on Art in Science and Technology (ArtiST) connected with the High Grade literary magazine at Mines. As I was involved in the ancient High Grade (back in 1977-1982), I thought it would be fun to jump in on this event. It was funny to be introduced as an alumni who had worked on the High Grade 30 years ago (!) (actually 35 years ago!): Ancien Régime.

It was an experience! The reading by Jake Adam York was stimulating (albeit somewhat dark).

Hmmm.

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some points and hints for students :: a remix

point == be where you are, look deep into the world from your point of view, and into the self, and out to the Other. share what you experience

point == find a flow that you can tap into, do so, pay attention to it, and see where it takes you

point == learn how to focus your energies on something; do that, at least for a time, and see what reflects and refracts from that focus

point == be sensitive to what resonates in/with your system; when something resonates, listen to the tone of the heart and any other resonate sounds within

point == action makes anything possible — there is no such thing as failure, there is only change

point == be open to all possible flows — incoming and outgoing — this will show up as a(n) (r)evolution in your life as well as a lived practice (praxis)

point == movement along/with(in) an intuitive flow will reveal truth in ever-changing forms — seek out that internal movement

point == creativity and rationality are two words that partially describe human behaviors — no words can describe the full reality of behavior. creativity is the movement of energies, rationality is the play of social abstractions — deal with both, you will have to anyway

point == seriously enjoy what you do, — if you don’t, then try changing what you do until the enjoyment returns — smile, it’s Lighter than you think

point == keep your own rules and points in mind while understanding that rules are only socially applied pathways that determine possible ways of human collaboration. collaborate often: define new pathways!

hints:

breathe, listen to your breath, listen to the breath of other things

understand what energy is and where your energy comes from

be a receiver and transmitter of energy

be open to energy flows

absorb many forms of energy

internalize or embody memory

drink plenty of water

be someplace, not just anyplace, and not everywhere

participate : share

watch the sky often

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Chris Norris Allen 1953 – 2011

Angie, Chris, Mary, and Jenny, Boulder, Colorado, USA, December, 1989

Chris Allen, one of my favorite students from way back in Master Black and White Printing at CU Boulder in the late 1980’s, passed today. Chris was a gentle, gracious, and humble soul, at the same time as being a fearless seer. His work at the time he was in my class was sourced in his tightly-knit family situation. He visually mapped the dynamic of his crew of young daughters and wife with an intensity and intimacy that I have not seen rivaled with such personal work. He was hard-working, focused, and completely un-self-conscious about his photography. We had many wonderful conversations about life and photography during that time. His wife, Sandy, was due with their fourth child, and they invited me to attend and photograph the birth which I did do. I remember saying yes to Chris, and then getting the phone call early one morning, “It’s time, come on over.” Uff! What have I done! I was terribly nervous about such an event, having never witnessed a birth before. But the vibe at the house, between the midwives and the kids, was incredibly calm and loving. I was blessed by their trust. more “Chris Norris Allen 1953 – 2011”

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  • place: Bundoora, VIC, Australia

first at something…

well, made to the top of one list, for a change, and not on a ‘most wanted’ one with profiles from my bad side. averaging 48 km/month, I jumped in front of the next highest person (gal) on the Lap-it-up campaign at the uni Sports Centre. that’s 48 km of swimming for the month. it’s been relatively easy, but it’s a chlorinated pool system, so I develop what my Boulder students labeled the “Einstein Effect” with my poor hair. oh well. I’ll cut it all off again before heading to summer climes anyway.

anything to avoid the prospect of facing the act of writing: it’s a bane right now. and social life, remote and local, is sadly lacking. can’t seem to organize anything of a balance between the two. it’s all or nothing in tracking what the Self determines as important. versus cashing in on material bulwarks. and anyways:

We see then that the deepest problems are often found in the study of what seems obvious, because the “obvious” is frequently merely a notion that summarizes the invariant features of a certain domain of experience which has become habitual and the basis of which has dropped out of consciousness. — David Bohm

posted
  • place: Preston, VIC, Australia

back to B&B

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • place: Bundoora, VIC, Australia

the predatory life/death: lex talionis

With the growth of industry comes the possibility of a predatory life; and if the groups of savages crowd one another in the struggle for subsistence, there is a provocation to hostilities, and a predatory habit of life ensues. There is a consequent growth of a predatory culture, which may for the present purpose be treated as the beginning of the barbarian culture. This predatory culture shows itself in a growth of suitable institutions. The group divides itself conventionally into a fighting and a peace-keeping class, with a corresponding division of labor. Fighting, together with other work that involves a serious element of exploit, becomes the employment of the able-bodied men; the uneventful everyday work of the group falls to the women and the infirm. — Thorstein Veblen

A man gets shot once in the face, and a second time to the head to ensure his demise. Other men are shot. A woman is shot. Why celebrate except in the instance of savagery, with an up-turned face, contorted with suppressed rage, making a vengeful grimace, and declaring the nation-state’s supremacy. An eye for an eye, the context lost on those who do not even know the content of the holy book coming from their own god. Instead, kill and be killed and kill and be killed. more “the predatory life/death: lex talionis”

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  • place: Bundoora, VIC, Australia

teaching, and prayers

jump into the Multi-Platform Story-Telling course to join Jan in the first day of audio work. the students seem quite activated as they continue on the projects that they started in video, moving to four-minute audio pieces, then on to some photographic work, and finally I’m supposed to tie it all together on the ABC Pool site. the intent of the course is to aim at social networking concepts, although I find that the Pool site is a rather generic top-down implementation of contemporary social media. it doesn’t look sustainable except by a back-end maintenance infrastructure (funding infusion), and activities imposed by related institutions (universities) (attention infusion). if there’s time, I’ll make some inquiries on stats, although I doubt that those will be publicly available. most organizations don’t understand that substituting grass-roots impulses with centrally planned deployments simply doesn’t work. we’ll see. I feel like the course is 15 years too late.

by happenstance, walking back from lunch with Jan, note that the Islamic prayer space (split into two sides, one for men and one for women), is open for visitors. the LTU Islamic Students group is holding an Islamic Awareness Week: Islam: The Solution. we go in, and I end up staying for a couple hours, first listening to the general discussion, then jumping in to talk with some of the students. hard to gauge the affect of being an Amurikan in such a situation. there is one other Anglo fellow there, and the rest are from all parts of the Islamic world. interesting field of dialogue follows.

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  • 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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Migrating: Art: Academies: done

MigAA book cover (pdf download)

After eight weeks of intensive effort, sometimes re-writing almost from scratch a wide range of (English-second-language) articles, essays, and academic papers, the second and final book from the MigAA project is done and at the printers. Bravo to the Alfa60 designers, Joseph and Lina in Vilnius — perhaps this book will win awards like the last one did! And big kudos to El Jefe, miga, without whom, none of this would have come to pass, none of it!

This is the jacket blurb I wrote in ten minutes — the day Lina was sending the book to the printers! more “Migrating: Art: Academies: done”

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  • place: Berlin, Germany

Migrating:Art:Academies: done

Migrating Realities (pdf download)

Migrating:Art:Academies:
ISBN 978-9955-854-91-3

This MigAA volume, titled Migrating:Art:Academies: invites the reader to construct their own opinion on the efficacy of the project as a field for learning and creative action. The book provides a link between the virtual school and the mobile school; it also functions as an anchor point for future research projects, and as an aesthetic package for the available documentary material. The projects introduced in the book — whether a drawing, a map, photographs, or a text — were delivered by the authors themselves, edited and assembled together with an eye on readability from multiple perspectives. The book is divided into three sections: Migrating:, Art:, and Academies:. Following these is a compendium of contributor’s biographies and finally, included with the book is a postcard containing a keyword index, the use of which is described below.

In the Migrating: section the reader will get an idea how the actual project participants worked and created while on the road and what their relation was to the general MigAA theme of migration. Personal interpretations, ideas, sketches, notions, and notes form a fertile first-draft of an ongoing process of artistic expression. Some of those impressions are included in this section along with photos, maps, and interviews.

The Art: section documents numerous art works — both conceptual and actual — along with related actions realized by MigAA participants during the laboratory deployments. The syntactically divergent projects vary from drawings to performances and installations to computer software packages and are here grouped by thematic or formal aspect.

The Academies: section contains more in-depth papers, articles, essays, and research documentations that were presented at some point during the project, or will be presented at the final conference in Berlin. Texts range from historical research, analysis of migration, to artistic and academic research presentations.

Around sixty keywords, key phrases, and key images were compiled and subsequently linked graphically across all three sections. An index deployed on the accompanying postcard offers a simple navigational beacon to follow throughout the book. The editors suggest following the red lines for objective keys and the blue lines for subjective keys. The awareness of subjective and objective functions of such indexing gives reason for further debate on what this specific book is about or what a printed book is about in general, as it is a mobile (and thus migrating) interface for ideas.

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  • place: Sydney, NSW, Australia

gah,

Got that one hurdle out of the way, though there is still the matter of the accompanying paper. I saw very clearly the interface between the institution and the wider world, where the protocol of the (semi-)ordered system imposes its particular form on the flow.

But, in the end, I may not be able to over-come the imposition of a protocol so polariz(ing)(able). The one person who coordinates the checking of unsatisfactory/satisfactory at this juncture did not seem to engage with my presentation at all. Except to point out that I satisfied precisely none of the assessment criteria. Were it a response that was nuanced, I could understand missing the mark, but with a complete rejection of the presentation, I find it a little over the top, and, well, disingenuous if the term intellectual engagement is being bandied about at the same time. If I didn’t have 20+ years of teaching with fifteen of it moving through this exact space of inquiry across tens of universities with hundreds of graduate students, I might be open to the idea that what I am articulating is not graspable or open to engagement, but in this case, I suspect some other mechanism was operating, what else can I do?

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assessments

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

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

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

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

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

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The Science of Disorder

I’ll retroactively begin to add bibliographic resource links with short reviews or notes on books that come to my attention. This one arrived via the usual intentional browsing. It represents several that begin to connect the dots between thermodynamics, techno-social systems, and the affect of human presence on the planet. It suggests that the movement away from a scientific approach to a technological approach is critical to the loss of our way to understanding the messy phenomena of human intervention in our world. Technological subjects are often taught without any grounding in philosophic principles of any sort. My own education at the School of Mines required only four three-credit-hour courses of (very general and poorly taught!) humanities for the entire undergraduate degree in geophysical engineering. And those courses in no way influenced the approach or the execution of any of the hard-core engineering courses. Instead they were frequently the object of derision as juxtaposed to the tough and demanding engineering classes — an implicit gendered polarity — wussy classes versus the rough and tough get-your-hands-dirty and only-the-toughest-survive macho applied-engineering classes. Things have changed somewhat in many engineering curricula (as evidenced by the fact that I do rather often have engineering students in my seminars and workshops), but there is the overt assumption that technology is above the messy fray of soft human affairs to which it brings only ordered progress, material wealth, and sustainable harmony. The former two are evidenced when examining closed (and limited) systems, the latter, nothing could be further from the truth.

Well-researched with both scientific and popular/media references, The Science of Disorder is readable, explicit, and provocative. (I’ll be expanding these reviews as I can manage: there is a huge backlog of rolling all previous bibliographic references to this style.)

The Science of Disorder: Understanding the Complexity, Uncertainty, and Pollution in Our World, Hokikian, J., Los Feliz Publishing, Los Angeles, 2002.
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the American Dream is only to survive

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

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

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

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  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

holding space and antinodes

Non-doing defines doing. Sitting in stillness invites people to move. Getting out of the way allows people to fill space with their passion. Letting go of expectations leaves room for responsibility to come forth. All of this is integrity. Every piece of doing requires the strong presence of non-doing to anchor it.

Stifling every impulse to intervene, to give directions and orders leaves space for others to design their lives. You can create a container and then stand by and watch it fill and teem with life. You don’t resist the natural movements of groups of people co-creating their futures. Instead you work on your own inability to be still, to want to own the outcomes, to want to invest your ego.

This is not your show. You are holding space, embodying space and being empty and full at the same time. If they thank you in the closing circle, you have not done enough. — The Tao of Holding Space, Chris Corrigan

and a side note on one of the seven marvelous students in the Ways of Listening course I taught this term at UTS. Ash undertook a fine project Antinode, you can check out the process-documentation blog that she set up. nothing like be-ing in the analog world! her experiences definitely fed back into the overall success of the class. auspicious start to teaching in Oz!

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  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

Ways of Listening

(stereo audio, 330 mb)

The final session of the Ways of Listening course that I taught this term. Brilliant students (Karen Banks, Sally Hill, Golam Mostafa, Nishant Singh, Marko West, Ricky Pannowitz, and Oliver Pieterse), good dialogue!

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  • place: Circular Quay, NSW, Australia

Temp°Sauna

Mika arrives back in town a few days ago from Newcastle and presenting Temp°Sauna at electrofringe (part of the this is not art event). the Nordic Embassy finds out and asks him to present the project — in the foyer of the Dendy Cinemas right on Circular Quay next door to the Opera — for the opening of a Nordic Film Festival. I cruise by on Thursday to help with the set-up which is a bit tricky because of a blustery wind blowing the entire evening, at one point almost knocking the whole rig over with the red-hot Finnish Army wood stove cranking away. there is a fancy opening with plenty of Finlandia vodka drinks, sushi, and posters from Saab and so on. at any rate, he managed to get a couple of the gals associated with the Embassy to jump in the sauna. I did too, with only one question — when would the next opportunity arise to do a real Finnish wood sauna there on the Quay? it was plenty hot, and we had a good laugh hanging around in towels as did the guests watching us at the opening reception. it’s a nice scene, and so I hang around to help shut everything down after some hours.

back again tomorrow?

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  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

(in) no time

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

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

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  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

bit

as an educator, I refuse to make the assumption that any reductive source (text or otherwise) is of greater efficacy in insuring self-preservation and enLightenment of the student than either their own (collective or accumulated) system of belief combined with their sensory (energy-receptive) system or any other particular (re)source. it is under that assumption that I proceed as a teacher — encouraging the student to trust their own judgment while approaching everything with an open and aware presence.

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  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

quick observations

tea and concrete in the morning and off for a full day of meetings and paperwork, prepping for teaching and research.

a visit to the library is disappointing, many books are in terrible condition, shabby, out-dated. hmmmm. what’s with that? evidence of zealous and active use? or small library budgets. in the technology section, so many were completely outdated and should have been consigned to basement stacks long ago.

profiling. black clad, stylishly-coiffed young Asian students with thick-rimmed Dior specs dominate the downtown city streets that I’ve frequented so far. haven’t gotten to the regular business district and will likely not unless there is a compelling reason.

bureaucracy. and catch-22’s loom out of the composition of days spent meeting people. technological infrastructure is problematic as well. regular network access simply does not work, and the help desk could not help. yet I can access a new WPA network constructed for iPhones and such.

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  • place: Mt. Princeton Hot Springs, Colorado

hot springs

up to the hot springs with the rust-e crew on a business/pleasure trip to nail down details on the sustainable creative practices conference/festival next February. we have a substantial cabin to hangout in and passes to the Hot Springs pools. the resort hasn’t changed too much since the last time I was there twenty years ago or so. the weather conforms to the springtime-in-the-Rockies norm: changeable. with a tendency to unusually wet and cloudy which no one complains about. too much water is rarely even a nuisance in the West. the 14’ers, Mt. Princeton, and Mt. Shavano are mostly invisible, but when the peaks appear, there is plenty of fresh snow above tree-line. no motivation to do any serious climbing between the tight schedule of meetings and mandatory soaks in the hot water.

first we have an orientation meeting with the resort management who are really enthusiastic about the conference plans. to be sure, February probably isn’t the busiest month up there. there are a few ski areas within 50 miles, but weather conditions can be severe at any time, and the hot springs aren’t right on a major highway.

the afternoon is spent up in St. Elmo being introduced to the Ghost Town Guest House bed-and-breakfast with one of the owners, Sharon. along with her husband, they have just recently finished a fantastic place right in the town, and are currently the only year-round residents.

the evening starts with a long soak followed by a sumptuous dinner that leaves everyone ready to crash after suitable aprés aprés. Chalk Creek can hardly be called a creek this weekend, with all the snow-melt and fresh precipitation, it is raging and fills the moist night air with a power that erases all other sounds.

the day’s activities are interspersed with memories of trips to Tincup, over the pass from St. Elmo, and jeeping with Collin, Joe, Mike, Chris, Cindy, and the usual eclectic posse that would converge at Joe’s family cabin there. ages ago. another life.

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  • place: en route Great Sand Dunes - Hooper - Moffat - Golden, Colorado

the Center

Day starts in a noisy campground, packing up, rolling out, the ritual stop at the Center of the Universe where there are further changes—someone has brought in a larger iron tank for the artesian well and an even larger one sits next to it. Someone has changed the flow of water such that the artesian well is now saturating the surrounding ground, salinating a wide area of the surface soil. The weeds are cut close to the ground. The two large wooden posts that I used to sight through the windows are lying on the ground. Change. I expect that someday soon the Center will be destroyed. What then? As with all documentation, that which is documented passes away. On to the Sand Dunes Swimming Pool (aka, the Hooper Pool) to get cleaned up before returning to civilization. It’s way too hot to do any laps, that and along with a couple school buses full of elementary school kids. End up having a long conversation with an elderly Latina woman baby-sitting her grand kids, a local to The Valley. I catch a group photo of a group of students from La Jara Elementary School.

On down to the low-lands, Golden. The big event, the main reason I schedule the trip for this time-period, Holly’s high school graduation (and Party!) approaches. I arrive at the house late in the afternoon to find Natalie and Cassie making brownies for the party. They promptly head off to a sleep-over, leaving me to watch the oven. Holly gets home, and then Sally, and Rick. Montse comes by as well. Much work to be done prepping food. Another trip to Costco accentuates the challenge. Then the task of making two large salads. It’s a team effort late into the night, and I’ve never quartered or halved so many cherry tomatoes before.