posted
  • 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: Whanganui, New Zealand

endings – Day 11 – eNZed

Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

I join the panel Social Energy with Zita Joyce, Caro McCaw, and Sally McIntyre along with a Skype from Eric (Kluitenberg) from late nite NL, half-way around the globe. It’s funny to cross paths with him here, but appropriate in the sense of the networking practice.

There was one point in his presentation that I had a serious disagreement with — when he posited that the remote half of a connection (in this case, a tele-presence ‘wall’ in a working environment), was ‘fantasy’ in the sense that it wasn’t ‘real.’ If I understood this correctly, I would totally disagree. It is rather a situation of sensory attenuation — the ‘presence’ of the remote Other is real, but attenuated (by the communications protocols between here and there). And it is in this attenuation where the loss and alienation from remoteness (and ultimately the frequent dysfunction of online events like ElectroSmog) arises. We didn’t get into it too far as there were other issues to talk about in the panel, but this one really was problematic. When assigning a ‘fantastical’ label to a real techno-social deployment we remove any (human) agency from it and push it into a phenomenal realm where it does not rightly fit. What is implemented is an expression of a human techno-social system — manifestations of this system are never fantasy.

Many good presentations, especially the comments from Mike Poa, the founder of the One River project with the waka on the Whanganui River. It’s hard to hear of yet another river suffering from the typical exploitation/development which ends up wasting the life of the entire watershed and its people. But then the efforts to revive the river culture seem to be pretty successful. The Maori are by no means quitters, and their cultural strength is significant. A couple days ago I spent part of an afternoon talking with a group of Maori women who were reviving/continuing the tradition of weaving baskets, they said that there was a very positive engagement from the young people.

It’s over, so, cleaning up the space and trucking everything back to the Green Bench or the house at the end of the afternoon.

The day closes with another delicious barbie at Don and Ana’s place, with the slow and mild twiLight falling.

Can’t wait to get another dose of NZ!

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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”

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

the fluidity of leaking

What could better illustrate the instability of protocol-driven social control systems than the phenomenon of a leak? Springing a leak is an irruption through a human-constructed wall (hull) holding back the chaotic flows of the sea. Wikileaks is a reversal of that, where the leak is from the inside of the ship-of-State to the outside. Where inside there are protocol-defined pathways of State-driven communication flow filling a space of partially-stabilized human endeavor. Every so often, one of the nodes of State communication goes rogue, mad, AWOL, counter, and defies the standing protocols by whatever means possible. Opening the mouth and speaking, telling the secrets of State, a yawning vomit of bilge over the sides: merely seasick.

The hull of the ship of State exists across a multi-dimensional space of refined/defined energy flow. Defined energy flow resists change and promotes continuance. Regarding the State, protocol controls individual behavior through internalized patterns of embodied thought. The State seeks any possible way to apply these internal protocols, and is successful if those ways promote the existence of the necessary flow pathways that insure the continuance of the structure of the State. The more rigid the expectations of the State, the more necessary the adherence to prescribed protocols (and vice versa). The State also applies controls to patterns of energy flow external to the body. These two (internal and external) sets of controls are not separate but rather are united in the space of flow to effect more-or-less total control on the participant and the crew of the ship of State. more “the fluidity of leaking”

posted
  • place: Sydney, NSW, Australia

birth of the DMA

History: National Military Establishment (NME), headed by Secretary of Defense, created by the National Security Act of 1947 (61 Stat. 495), July 26, 1947, which divided the War Department into separate Department of the Air Force and Department of the Army and reduced the status of the three military departments (Army, Navy, Air Force) to that of constituent units. NME redesignated DOD by the National Security Act Amendments of 1949 (63 Stat. 578), August 10, 1949.

Navy Predecessors
more “birth of the DMA”

posted
  • place: Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

western terminus Yampa Bench

west terminus of Yampa Bench at the Chew Ranch, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado, May 2010

Sleep difficult, not sure why, whether simple discomfort, though the back of the truck seems very comfortable in the immediate impression, warm, soft enough, but body cannot find a comfortable position, side to side, somehow, problems. Could be that yoga hasn’t been happening in the last days. Hiking is a challenge for the body as well.

Drive up to the head of Sand Canyon, intent on doing a hike, but what looks like bad weather coming in, a heavy front across the whole west, sends me back after a short recon along the Bench Road. It seems doable as an alternative escape route, if this end is the worst, though, in wet conditions, forget it. And it totals thirty miles to Elk Springs, not just the three miles I did on recon. Almost all of it is in the red and yellow (bentonite) clay-sandstone alluvium, and this is precisely this same stuff which sits at the top of the Echo Park Road — from the 2000-foot displacement on the Mitten Park Fault, so, no real solution in heavy and widespread rain. However, this doesn’t seem the case — the rain is sporadic, fast-moving, and interspersed with bright sunshine and the roads are basically still dry after two days of ‘winter storm,’ so fretting about it is a waste of energy. Either I get out on Friday or I don’t and have to wait a few days. Plenty of water, fuel, and food, so that is no problem. The only locked-in point is the flight next Wednesday evening to Portland. But I’d still hate to miss the yurt-raising in Glade Park at Collin and Marisa’s this weekend! more “western terminus Yampa Bench”

posted
  • place: Wendover, Utah

CLUI residency — Energy of Situation

Some final words on the residency period:

Energy of Situation

Rather than producing new material configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system, I chose to concentrate on a fundamental closer to the bone, as it were: the production of new configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system. What we do changes the cosmos, always, everywhere, (because everywhere’s are not separated nor distinct).

Traditional art production is (merely) the (re)configuration of certain flows in the near (and far) surround of the producer. My approach generally falls under this model but approaches the reconfiguration process from an entirely different path. Entering a ‘residency’ is (merely) moving from one (life)-situation into another: we are constantly doing this in life, transitioning from one semi-stable configuration to another, with periods of more-or-less instability in between. If one leaves traditional temporal and spatial metrics behind, this process may be seen simply as the modulation of a constancy of flowing condition. The particular conditions and configurations of a situation dictate the potential range of reconfigurations possible, given the energy input of the individual and the embodied life-energy/life-time that is available. The configuration is merely a cumulative apprehended set of flows occurring with a reductive purview (and is always relative to the observer!) There is the ‘locally external’ factor of the accessibility of external energy sources for reconfiguring, but if one approaches the situation as a more autonomous and self-contained instance, the range of possibility is limited just as life-time and life-energy is limited. It is along this approach that I undertook this residency. (I will here omit a wider discussion of the framework of my personal model of the cosmos as there isn’t the room here to undertake it even in brief).
more “CLUI residency — Energy of Situation”

posted
  • place: Wendover, Utah

CLUI: Day Eight

A few notes on techno-social systems:

In analyzing the affect of technology on a social system it is critical to identify and understand 1) what actors or protocols are determining the pathways of energy flow, 2) ultimately how individuals in the system interact with the pathway(s), 3) the resulting benefit and who receives it, 4) the mechanisms by which benefit (energy) is accumulated by those controlling the protocols. Prior to this it is probably necessary to map the general sources of energy that are being re-purposed (directed) by the techno-social system.

By tracing in detail 1) the relations of power, 2) the pathways along which energy and power flow, 3) the sources and destinations of the flows, the entirety of human relation may be positioned at both a macro scale and a granular (that is, human-to-human) scale: with the implicit understanding that all relation is permeated by the affects of the wider system.

For a techno-social system to be successful, by definition, it has to capture a certain minimum of the life-time/life-energy of participants in the system: this is a technology’s ultimate function within its social system/context. What is deterministic is the absolute need for life (human and elsewise) to continue, and in this continuance, to refine pathways of energy flow to aid in that continuance via the collective augmentation of the techno-social system.

(Are there technologies which do not concentrate energy within a certain subset of individuals to increase their ultimate life-extending pro-creativity? Are there systems which re-distribute widely their concentrated sources?) What about the struggle of certain individuals for a greater level of personal autonomy — those who would seek to either not participate in prescribed flow pathways or would seek to alter those pathways to suit individual desires? The inertia of the techno-social affects the personal trajectories of adoption or imposition.

In a wide social system, a techno-social system, technology is generally used as a means for concentrating energy for a subset of elites of the system. The balance of the participants, the drones, the prolls, the slaves, are inculcated from birth with the fiction that they are receiving more than they actually surrender to the social system. In the case of slaves, this balance reads: your life for your embodied labor.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Momentum

The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavors to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line. — Isaac Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Momentum. It’s easier to (continue to) follow a prepared pathway, or a pathway that has allowed, formerly, the development of a certain velocity and quality of transit. Shifting pathways requires adjustments in … everything, not just velocity. And change … is … difficult. But why? Is it a force of instinct that keeps track of optimized behavior, keeping one from engaging in potentially non-optimized or energy-intensive experimentation, or is it merely the threat of social dissonance, or dis-position?

Looking for a path to follow. Which one. Well trodden, worn, abandoned, crowded, one-way, two-way, or simply not there.

Make one.

And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, then to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them. — Niccolò Machiavelli, “The Prince”

Make change? Nah, change is simply allowed as all is change anyway. The Prince guarantees his incremental redundancy by not embracing all the evidences and actualities of change that he may possibly comprehend.

In the Book of Changes a distinction is made between three kinds of change: nonchange, cyclic change (recurrence), and sequent change (non-recurrence). Nonchange is the background, as it were, against which change is possible. For in regard to any change there must be some fixed point to which the change can be referred; otherwise there can be no definite order and everything is dissolved in chaotic movement. The point of reference must be established, and this always requires a choice and decision. It makes possible a system of coordinates into which everything else is fitted. Consequently at the beginning of the world, as at the beginning of thought, there is the decision, the fixing of the point of reference. … The ultimate frame of reference for all that changes is the unchanging.

The question of change is an incremental valuation. All cannot change all the time. Where change can occur and where it may occur and how it will occur is constantly in flux. Social systems seek to attenuate flows of change that are too powerful, and to amplify those which are insufficient, as judged by the momentary contingencies and needs of the system. The task of scaling an appropriate response to the evolving conditions provides for the auspicious outcome.

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routed, rooted

If everything now becomes about the Road: it all falls along that infinitely converging line, that pavement rising to the foot, hard, on occasion scraping the nose, the knees, or the palms; it is both that which is down-trodden, and the means to get there. A path for social flows, climbing, gathering, consuming, dispersing. Freedom, indeterminacy, hydrocarbon wastage, imperial protocols, signage, regulation, safety, danger, possibility, newness. On the road, carrying the old with oneSelf, in a worn knapsack, that which is old, known, important, very important.

So, three or four threads: 1) the Self on the road; 2) the encounter with the Other on the road; 3) the road as an expression of the techno-social context for human relation; 4) what to do on the road that cannot be done elsewhere or under other conditions — what the road proffers to life, how one gets there, that and imagining the end of the road (Oz! to meet the Wizard (or Sorceress) hehe, from the Yellowbrick Road to Oz, now ain’t that whacked!).

In that moment I was able, so to speak, to place myself in a future which may one day be realized. I saw not only what I might one day be able to do, but also I saw this — that the anticipation of the event was an augur of the deed itself. Suddenly I realized how it had been with the struggle to express myself in writing. I saw back to the period when I had the most intense, exalted visions of words written and spoken, but in fact could only mutter brokenly. Today I see that my steadfast desire was alone responsible for whatever progress or mastery I have made. The reality is always there, and it is preceded by vision. And if one keeps looking steadily the vision crystallizes into fact or deed. There is no escaping it. It doesn’t matter what route one travels — every route brings you eventually to the goal. “All roads lead to Heaven,” is the Chinese proverb. If one accepted that fully, one would get there so much more quickly. One should not be worrying about the degree of “success” obtained by each and every effort, but only concentrate on maintaining the vision, keeping it pure and steady. The rest is sleight-of-hand work in the dark, a genuine automatic process, no less somnambulistic because accompanied by pains and aches. — Henry Miller, “To Paint is to Love Again”

Writing on the road. The translation of movement and sensual input to text. Learning what filters to apply, what social protocols to apply, what protocols to transcend, what to hold, what to release. Discipline.

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desire, complexity, simplicity, determinism (mix-up mash-up)

Today, mulling the difference between technological determinism (as a self-propagating system on its own immutable trajectory) and the reciprocal idea that human social systems selectively construct the systems of technology they ‘desire’ (subject to all the variability of the particular social system within which the technology is embedded). Then, within that selection process, thinking about the process of development and the general trend towards greater complexity. Do these processes ever trend generally to greater simplicity? Does desire ever, on a wide social scale, ever become directed to less material abundance? Is material security predicated with amassing more-than-sufficient material wealth? Or do society-wide technological systems collapse towards simplicity only in cases of ‘natural’ disaster.

[Complexity and simplicity are used here as general indicators of the depth and breadth of the techno-social system’s process of provision and production that leads to services, situations, or products deemed necessary for participants. Metrics of complexity would include geographic proximity, ease of access, energy density, and the number of substantive steps required to produce a product or create a desired energy flow. The relative necessity of a product is highly subjective and varies widely between different systems. Necessity is a cultural construct (complementing, say, Maslow’s needful ranking). Complexity may be indicated by the number of discrete steps that can be described that a process passes through — steps/degrees of flow alteration.] more “desire, complexity, simplicity, determinism (mix-up mash-up)”

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road relations

As long as man’s wants and his desires for military conquest were confined to petty hostilities between individuals or tribes, the necessity for roads other than mere pathways or trails was not felt. With the beginnings of land commerce and the spirit of conquest between nations, there arose the necessity of ways better adapted to the changed needs and conditions, and with the growth of trade and military operations successive improvements in the character of the ways and the means of transportation were made only to give way to others with new conditions made a change imperative. — Charles Whittle in “Ancient and Modern Highways”

We were not a wealthy Nation when we began improving our highways… but the roads themselves helped us create a new wealth, in business and industry and land values… So it was not our wealth that made our highways possible. Rather, it was our highways that made our wealth possible. — Thomas H. MacDonald, Chief, U.S. Bureau of Public Roads

the creation of pathways onto which energy flow is restrictively directed/sanctioned is primarily for the benefit of those who occupy the nexus of power within any particular system. all roads lead to Rome.

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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”

posted
  • 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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what is

… what is is movement. Actually what tends to make it difficult for us to work in terms of this notion is that we usually think of movement in the traditional way as an active relationship of what is and what is not. — David Bohm

This gets to a core condition — all is movement: movement/motion is creative (including our consciousness). It also suggests that a redirection of that movement is not really possible, as redirection itself as a concept is simply the mapping relative to a Cartesian or other reductive framework. That is, unless the redirection is thought of as a (the) outcome of processional (negentropic) attenuation of flows caused by life. Which suggests that life itself is essentially creative, an obvious linguistic tautology. But life, as a general phenomena, affects a wide range of arbitrarily specified flows (flows that can be viewed in a traditionally categorized way as being different). By this I mean that in addition to the base (chemical) energy conversion mechanisms that govern most life forms there are a vast, subtle, and complex array of expressions of these processes which biochemists have been slowly teasing out, but never reaching a finality on at all. Whatever the case, the flows can be said to follow more or less explicit pathways (although our traditional view of these pathways is largely informed by mechanistic understanding and reductive framing. It is also such that it is our implicate consciousness, our full and immediate apprehension of the phenomena that we sense, is part of that originary what is.

Memory is the prime example of the persistence of a pathway of flow. It is precisely the persistence that allows us to move through the world without each successive moment being a surprising cacophony of unpredicted and unrecognizable sensory impressions. While at the same time, memory is itself, as an element of consciousness, implicate to what is being circumscribed.

The process of thought is not, however, merely a representation of the manifest world; rather it makes an important contribution to how we experience this world, for, as we have already pointed out earlier, this experience is a fusion of sensory information with the replay of some of the content of memory (which latter contains thought built into its very form and order). — David Bohm

posted
  • place: Columbia, Missouri

Randy Olson

(00:56:52, stereo audio, 109.2 mb)

attend a screening last night of Randy Olson’s Flock of Dodos at the RagTag Cinema in Columbia. he was in attendance. and again this morning, he gave a presentation for science academics at the university as a part of their Darwin Days (where the Chair of the Life Sciences Department pointed out they were not allowed to say “celebration” but rather “commemoration”). the film’s premise was to map out the way both sides of the evolution/creationist divide are communicating and presenting their POV to the public. scientists are shown to be poor communicators, creationists shown to be poor communicators except for some who know the value of style and appearance (the Discovery Institute being the chief antagonists posing as a non-partisan think-tank). they are the ones leading the issues. in the same way Republicans have been successful in constructing the narratives guiding the story-following population to the conservative Nirvana. Olson, a former Harvard PhD biologist transitioned to Hollywood via a degree at USC’s film school. he now tells stories that bridge the divide between science and the general public. but the leap from stories to action — stories that form a context for action — well, there is generally a passivity that is a condition of listening/watching a story recitation. listening to stories has to stop at some point. so, the story has to have a transitional mechanism leading to action. how does that work? telling a story and have action arise out of the exchange of energies. the attentive focus of absorbing a story transforming into world-changing action. in the evening Nick and I catch the screening of Sizzle also by Olson. overheard today:

mass media is directed at the pelvic floor, but what about having Kegels for Consciousness…?

later a repaired drum appears, as does a Tibetan singing bowl, and a basket full of instruments. resonant sound-making ensues.

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thesis proposal :: Background

Background for Research

While individual human presence in this world has fundamental repercussions on be-ing, it is the ever-present and synergistic exchange between humans — forming what I call a “continuum of relation” — that governs much of life. This energetic field of human relation is sometimes fraught with difficulties and complications in spite of the rich and necessary dynamic it brings to life. Technology, as a ubiquitous factor in mediating human relation, often dominates while presented as providing the only opportunity for mediated connection and interaction between humans.

Presence, as apprehended by the Other, circumscribes a range of sensory inputs that require energy (from the Self) to stimulate and drive. The efficacy and sustainability of human connection builds on the very real and tangible transmissions and receptions of energy between the Self and the Other. An interconnected plurality of dialectic human relation may be described as a network. These networks, made up of a web of Self-Other connections form the base fabric of the continuum of relation. Technology appears in these networks as the mediating pathway that is the carrier of energy from node to node, person to person. Technological systems also appear to apply absolute restraints on and attenuation of the idiosyncratic flows inherent in that continuum of relation. The discrete objects that populate the (technological) landscape of the continuum of relation and that modulate the character of communications are literally artifacts of a materialist point of view. A primary assumption in my research is that a materialist or mechanistic view of the world no longer suffices to adequately circumscribe the phenomena occurring within the continuum of relation. more “thesis proposal :: Background”

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thesis proposal :: A Note on Trans-disciplinarity

Trans-disciplinarity is a popular expression for the need for thinking (and expressing!) outside the cubic space defined by any limited social system or sub-system. Innovative solutions are often found by combining many possible strands of thought from disparate disciplines and points of view. Critical engagement of a plurality of voices is essential when moving in trans-disciplinary spaces, and this will constantly be kept in mind to the degree possible. The use of language in a trans-disciplinary space is a particular challenge which, to a significant degree, determines the successful outcome of the attempt to bridge disciplinary spaces. Indeed, disciplinarity is often defined by the cumulative social use of a specific linguistic system that is exclusive to the discipline. As a former engineer, and now as an educator and artist for the past two decades, I have significant experience in coherently bridging the somewhat isolated linguistic spaces that define those different ‘worlds.’

It is clear that there is a solid need for this kind of inquiry in the trans-disciplinary space of techno-social systems given the intensity of technological development and the complexity of globalized human presence. It is my desire to contribute to the search for sustainable principles and systems that honor first the need for a healthy continuum of human relation instead of placing technological solutions at the forefront. This, at the same time as acknowledging the fundamentally symbiotic inter-relationship of the two concepts.

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thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts

Concerning Particular Methodologies

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

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

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Jean-Marie Gustave LeClezio

WOW, my all-time favorite writer, Jean-Marie Gustave LeClezio won the Nobel Prize for Literature! Splendid! Incroyable! Very deserving! I first picked up a copy of Les Giants, The Giants, in English translation back in 1987 or so at the CU Boulder library. I was hooked. Fantastically minute and prismatic observations of everyday moments. Incisive and elemental critique of human be-ing on the planet. On one of my trips to Paris in the 1980s I attempted to make contact with him through his French publisher, Gallimard, but was not successful.

I suppose this will get more of his books into translation which is a good thing, IMHO. I think that at least seven of the thirty or so may be found in English, slightly more than that in German.

as a preface to the online Center of the Universe documentation, I use

So everything is ready: ready for the journey to Purgatory, the journey to the land of black and white… The last remaining area of imperfection seems to disappear; the perfect work of not-being, a beautiful poem, monochrome and illegible. — J-M. G. LeClezio

Le Clézio, J.-M.G., 2009. Desert, 1st U.S. ed., Boston: David R. Godine.
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  • place: Berlin, Germany

remembering

the tmp-deluxe performance is over. not interesting or successful at all. off track, I should not have wasted my energy of pre-tension on it.

Auto-Destructive Art Machine Art Auto Creative Art

Each visible fact absolutely expresses its reality.

Certain machine produced forms are the most perfect forms of our period.

In the evenings some of the finest works of art produced now are dumped on the streets of Soho.

Auto creative art is art of change, growth movement.

Auto-destructive art and auto creative art aim at the integration of art with the advances of science and technology. The immediate objective is the creation, with the aid of computers, of works of art whose movements are programmed and include “self-regulation”. The spectator, by means of electronic devices can have a direct bearing on the action of these works.

Auto-destructive art is an attack on capitalist values and the drive to nuclear annihilation. — Gustave Metzger, 1961

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

teaching parameters

begin this morning sketching out the chapter Dialogue and the Other :: Protocols of Intimacy (that’s a provisional title, I came up with the protocols of intimacy phrase a few days ago, and liked it). it has a chapter-title-resonance like the Regime of Amplification :: A Primer.

this is the chapter where the core teachings lie. or where many foundational assumptions that hold up the broader teachings will be framed. it is the easiest and most difficult chapter. simple and complex. powerful and simple.

and a question pops into mind — when thinking about how I need to provide as many examples of situations to students to re-inforce the efficacy of the worldview — how is it that the teaching of ones own worldview is so different than teaching the worldviews of others. how is it that so much education is simply the mass inculcation of a canon of Others by individuals who are somehow lesser than those represented by the canon and to a grouping of individuals who have no value to the social system until they are fully inculcated. was it such that only those in the canon were truly great Teachers, and all who come after them merely lesser disciples? Or does the social system have the tendency to self-reify at the price of eliminating successors of equal or greater inspiring power? isn’t it such that any individual has some lesson to teach any Other? where is this lesson taught? it should be enshrined in a bill of human obligations (versus human rights), that any human may learn something from any other human.

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

Art and Teaching Philosophy

ART

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

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

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

tea

gusts and streamers of corn snow bounce past the windowsill, bringing the imagined shivering anticipation of heading out to shop for groceries. finally finished with the tin of Turkish Tomurcuk Earl Grey tea. it was good, but a disappointment compared to the long-leaf Ceylonese also available at the Turkish supermarket around the corner from Mindaugas’ place. I bought the tin because is was smaller than the huge kilo boxes of long-leaf. can’t decide now whether to pick up a small quantity of finer tea, or what. last month I picked up a stainless steel tea brewer that holds probably three or four regular cups of water. I’ve been brewing a full container each morning for the pre-noon writing session, drinking by the sip the whole time practically, tea with whole milk. necessary practice just to keep hands warm. otherwise I have to wear half-gloves — the relative lack of finger motion (am I not writing enough?) chills the hands. so, it is an integral part of the writing process that seems to be happening here. whether or not it is successful, I cannot say until I spin the text out into the wider spaces of network. that’s about to happen as I am working on the conclusions while refining the precursor parts of the overall text.

and in the time I write this, blue sky arrives. squall weather like in Iceland. ripping through. and vanishing without a trace.

I head out for a trip to the grocery. it is cold, but the trip down is with the wind, and I travel between squalls. I’m in a quandary over which tea to get now. bags are three times the cost of bulk, but they have only large 250 gram bags of bulk, so the total price is steep. and also, since I again focus on Earl Grey, though I wouldn’t mind a custom mix with some Lapsang Souchong or Russian, the bergamot in the Earl Grey is very volatile, so a large bag will lose its flavor unless it is used quickly. hmmm. but the price point drives me these days on as tight a budget that I am. so, big bag of Earl Grey. so it goes. looking forward to the first cup after the end of the Turkish stuff.

yesterday, a touristic walk around the Reichstag and Tiergarten area with Marie-Hélène. clearly a major holiday, most shops closed except for cafes. and hundreds of people out walking despite the chilly weather. the line was too long to go up into the dome, so we wandered down to the HKW to take in Song Dong’s installation, then back to the Holocaust Memorial via the Brandenberg Gate (past the guy dressed in full buckskins and a faux-Sioux war bonnet playing some kind of generic indigenous flute music with a back-up sound system and generator. just too weird for me. the Euro-obsession with an imagined and imaginary cowboy-and-indian culture in the mythological West of Hollywood is mostly over the top and with no connection to reality.)

I find myself frequently (at least in mind) making the comparison between Washington, D.C., and Berlin. as Imperial centers (in different phases of dominance).

posted
  • place: Berlin - Friedrichshain, Germany

Yo vivire!

this marks a shifting point for the travelog for the next weeks, months likely. landed in Berlin on this effort to focus in place on writing. very unsure of the outcome, but the attempt is necessary to explore whether or not text production is possible, and by social weight of text, whether social viability of the pathway is an illusion or a reality. success or failure will not particularly matter, but will determine future pathways. so, writing will be away from this forum mostly if I can maintain a disciplined way. it will also be away from email and mailing list. teaching will proceed as necessary, but with more limited virtual connection. if you are heading to Berlin, let me know, though, I won’t be a total monk. nor will I be a saint.

posted
  • place: Düsternbrooke, Kiel, Germany
  • author: Sarah Chung

Sarah Chung

former student Sarah lets me reprint this article she wrote recently about her creative practice:

Sarah H. Chung :: https://www.myspace.com/sarahhdot

I am an experimental multimedia artist, a student, and a teacher based in Denver, Colorado, USA. My latest artistic pursuits are a combination of various mediums including still image, video, sound, sculpture, light, and performance. Most recently I have been collaborating with another female artist, Heidi Higginbottom, to choreograph audio/visual performances using found objects, homemade instruments, contact microphones, and film loops. We make homemade contact microphones out of easily attainable and affordable materials and use them to amplify the sound of the movement of objects. We have used objects ranging from dishware, tile, typewriters, music boxes, sewing machines, thumb pianos, toys, water, or any curious object we can get our hands on. Our intentions are not to make melodic pieces of “music,” but to isolate and arrange pure commonplace sounds that would normally be easily lost in the proceedings of everyday life. While these objects may be ordinary, they refer to a vast web of associations and marked memories. By arranging them, we create a new resonance in the relationships the objects and symbols have with one another. These relationships are meant to be memory cues that can be triggered by sensory experience. We are in the process of experimenting with different technologies and digital software to incorporating projections, audio delay, editing and looping.

As a studio art major I was largely focused on traditional forms of art such as painting, drawing, and photography. It was about six years ago that I began to pay more attention to the intricate and beguiling aspects of the digital art culture. I was introduced to it from digital art courses being taught by visiting professor, John Hopkins, who is a working artist and has taught and traveled internationally. Projects included collecting and arranging self-generated media and media filtered from outside sources. These included field recordings, videos, still images, and lines of text. I had not dealt with this kind of medium prior to this, so I approached it the same as I would painting and 35mm photography. While the navigation of new software in a limited time span was challenging, the results of the projects left me very intrigued and curious about digital culture. I believe that the success of these projects were due to the non-linear process of collecting media without a finished product as motivation. Filtering media (books, internet, video, music, sound clips, etc.) provides an intuitive process for choosing content. It becomes a dialogue that interacts with an individuals sensibilities and social views. Whether I am drawn to content or pure aesthetic, some aspect of the media strikes me, and I collect it.

With human interaction, technology can be used as a tool to express emotion and the individualized perspectives of human experience. Technology brings with it an efficiency that adds new time-lines within our culture. Ubiquitous media screens flash loaded images and sounds that are intended to influence feelings and opinions about products, services, and perspectives in government. These messages compete with each other and have conditioned us to receive information at an exponentially increasing rate. In a society saturated with advertising, I feel a responsibility to express and tap into more emotive, internalized feelings and memories, and to offer a situation for slowing down. This desire is what caused me to seek out the tools and skills that could connect me with the vast and accessible network I was experiencing.

I believe it is of utmost importance for individuals to be informed about technologies so that they may exercise basic democratic principles. I had been intimidated by technology before, but I felt that placing myself outside of the existence of it is like surrendering my own rights. Technology is propelled by human curiosity, but is often used as a system of control. History is constantly redefined based on documentation. Dominant historical theories are based on those with the power to document and expose others to their material. It is crucial to actively participate in the documentation process of our own history in process.

Links: (check them out!!)
https://www.neoscenes.net
https://home.earthlink.net/~erinys/contactmic.html
https://www.pierrebastien.com/
https://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/
https://www.mutek.org/
https://www.haamu.com/launau
https://www.colleenplays.org/
https://www.skoltzkolgen.com/

posted
  • place: Paddington, Australia

art

Kly Yee, the guy in the COFA tuck shop — does wonders with cream on the top of the coffees that he serves. tried to Bluetooth some snaps he had made on his phone of different designs he had made, but wasn’t successful, my SIM was full. will try again later.

what about impressions of urban Sydney? lots of small shops — clothing, jewelry, food, cafes, small restaurants, and on every corner, upstairs the Hotel, downstairs the bar, pub, snookers hall, whatever, mostly quite upscale. clean, none of the sawdust-and-vomit-on-the-floor scene of ages past. though the design with tiling three-quarters up the walls for convenient hosing down remains. then there are the backpacker hotels, clubs, and adult entertainment joints. the occasional acupuncture and massage salons open to the sidewalk, feet protruding from behind curtained stalls and sweating Chinese hosts doing their thing. globalization is expressed in Kinkos, 7-11’s, MacDonalds, Western Union, and such, though these are a definite minority, with (apparently) non-franchise places dominant. there could very well be some mafia-type of franchising going on, but not to the casual observer. cosmopolitan. even critical locals said the Olympics were a good thing. blah blah blah…

with a climate similar to areas of Southern California, comparisons would be obvious, but in terms of general quality-of-life, Sydney would out-rank SoCal easily — especially as the population seems to enjoy the relaxed and low-key street-level cafe-scene, rather than the more obnoxious automobile-driven and anti-social SoCal mentality.

but, enough of banal and surficial observations. it does appear that there are significant levels of stress in the educational system. doing a brief presentation at a doctoral seminar yesterday initiated a number of conversations with some of the attendees. each detailed the particular struggle to get a quality education while dealing with personal economic issues. many students work, some full-time. the government has several funding schemes, but not all people can take advantage of then, given their individual situations. funding is time-limited, as has become the norm in Europe, and similarly, tuitions are rising.

but there seems to be a robust demographic pursuing doctoral degrees either part-time or full-time. good for them!

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

back to teaching

reading Stephen Brookfield’s two recent books on teaching — The Skillful Teacher, On Technique, Trust, and Responsiveness in the Classroom and The Power of Critical Theory, Liberating Adult Learning and Teaching along with Parker Palmer’s essays on education as a spiritual journey, To Know As We Are Known. might as well be girding for the rest of a career in education while job hunting. weak areas include the feedback process, especially the short-term-feedback processes to gauge how students are coping with the course at different levels. this doesn’t apply to the 2-week intensive workshops which have a constant level of dynamic feedback running the entire time. but the idea of having two online forum log-in ID’s for each student — one an assigned user ID (or self-selected user name) and the second being anonymously assigned (pull the user/password slip out of a hat at the beginning of the course) and used for posting reactions to the class situation. this can include both posed questions from myself as well as ad hoc discussions on subject material, procedures, processes, expectations, and outcomes.

part of me likes this idea, while part of me sees it as just another way of artificially coping with the chasm that has evolved over the years where the teacher and student start off their relationship not from a position of mutual trust, but of adversarial suspicion and imbalance. this largely because of the (de)formative pressures of the social system that sees education as a key element in the hegemonic production of consumables. nothing more. many now see ‘higher’ education as a mechanistic successor of primary education — where primary education was the social mechanism needed to produce people literate enough to perform as a worker in the industrial ‘revolution;’ higher education merely fills the role of producing ‘line’ workers for the information ‘revolution.’ uff!

Popular escapist fiction enchants adult readers without challenging them to be educated for critical consciousness. — bell hooks

posted
  • place: Lakewood, Colorado

jottings to iDC

sotto voce: A model is reductionist. A model will never be the thing itself. (A map is not the territory).

Consider an isolated individual — he/she looks at the world, receives energy into his/her body system. Recognizes patterns of flow, and behaves according to such patterns (over time)… (Learning). Building a model by which to interact ‘successfully’ with the flows around him/her.

OR, an individual is told the parameters of the model (non-experiential learning), accepting what an Other tells (because of the position of power-relation where the Other is more powerful in that social relation).

Science is a collective phenomena at the cusp between these two situations.

Which do we trust most? Our own analysis of the energy flows impinging on our body-system, or the system of the Other?

I believe that over-socialization — a global trend perhaps based on the simple facts of growing population and lessening room — is an inexorable force which demands the second condition to the exclusion of the first. The first is dangerous (to the social): unpredictable, unstable, and requires one to be living at the very front of experience, to learn in the moment, to exist in the momentary flow of being. The second allows leisure, taking the word of an Other about survival parameters, ‘good enough at this time.’

As a teacher I facilitate confidence in the first — trust in ones own sensory input — at the same time as acknowledging that we are products of the second system (more and more) which has interfered with the first process of immediate feedback from body system — embodied learning.

Technology is the means for a social system to codify and implement the (scientific) model such that it may be literally im-pressed on the sensory system of the individual (the collective hallucination). Thus, to counteract this process and to have embodied learning, the im-pressions of technology and of surrounding social system need to be removed (for at least a moment) to allow the individual to feel their socially un-encumbered body, and the flows of life that are impinging on it — without the intervention of non-experiential, second-hand socialized models.

Based on this description, technology is very problematic in that it socially codifies a point-of-view (worldview) which is then applied to the individual who is participating in that social system.

You can chose to trust the momentary sensory input to your system (and be marginalized by that same social system), or you can choose to assimilate into the social system and take on the collective worldview instead.

It’s a sliding scale of participation and reciprocal marginalization, but I believe we are sliding ever towards the second end of the scale. This slide precipitates the long-term denial of embodied and creative life in the stead of socially mandated ‘solutions for living’ like Songdo City.

Uff…

So, coming back to Situated Technologies — they seem to be the result of an (continuous) evolution of the social system — which is now intricate enough to apply/deliver these im-pression systems at an ever more individual/granular level to insure socially ‘proper’ worldviews…

yikes!

posted
  • place: en route Sangre de Christo Mountains - Boulder, Colorado

Valley View

plowing through connections that will be inductive to progressive evolution. so that fluid state-of-being constructed today is different than that of yesterday. attitude to be adopted is that of the vital. means is not thought but embodied action. although it is correct to say that we are never the same from moment-to-moment, this is at the finest level of be-ing. the more gross and dominant levels, change is incremental and often subducted by the inertia of comfort.

soaking away in the Valley View Hot Springs for some hours with Sage tagging along.

If we set ourselves down on the bank of the moments so as to observe them as they flow by, all we are able to recognize in them in the end is a meaningless succession, time which has lost its substance, abstract time, a transformation of our inner void. One step further, and from abstraction to abstraction it becomes more and more threadbare through our fault, it dissolves into temporality, it become a shadow of itself. Our task now is to give it back life, and to adopt a clear and unambiguous attitude towards it. — E. M. Cioran

posted
  • place: en route - Prescott, Arizona - Durango, Colorado

road-trip

still mulling Marc Tuter’s article in Leonardo; mulling how the praxis model for supra-academic success entails generating texts that fit into book-forms; mulling rhetoric; mulling spin; mulling at the inertia which keeps social institutions functional. as long as individuals are willing to place life energy in representative forms.

when co-option takes place — it is often (always) from a form of exhaustion of the self to resist the social inertia of a situation. peer pressure in a vastly more brutal and subtle way. although one powerful solution to this creeping anti-autonomy is to have a sustainable/sustained lived praxis that is authentic — with spiritual presence and active engagement.

social inertia keeps me on the road on the long drive across the reservation to Durango.

Maps are power. Either you will map or you will be mapped. — Nietschmann

posted
  • place: Livermore, California

various fortunes

head over with Dana in her mongo black off-road beast for Chinese fast food lunch — I can’t understand what the guy taking orders is saying — afterward she checks out her first apartment.

fortune cookie:

A partnership shall prove successful for you

 
head for the pool after that.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

become republican

JC sends this to da40 — become republican

I respond,

sotto voce:

only too true, though personally I’m not so rabidly anti-Jesus. it’s the zealots who, as the cartoon points out, hide behind His words and are fundamentally hate-full and intolerant. not what I would expect from the pursuit of a Christ-like behavior emulation…

seems there are glimmers of hope that the society has woken up from a bad dream that was imposed by the 2000 pseudo-election. I frankly don’t have much hope though, that the systemic corruption in the political system is going to go away at all, demos or repubs are the same animal from that perspective.

in the Republic system of Rome, there were various contingencies (balances of power) to cover during different times of need (war being the primary one, though it was misused as a power-manipulation tool — nothing new about that! It is interesting that the concept (and specific form of civil rule) dictatorship was held for a temporary crisis.
more “become republican”

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

reflections on the classroom

to the IDC list

sotto voce: Although, as a University educator — I agree with John’s appraisal of the condition of the contemporary educational institution (having taught in around 50 institutions in Europe and the US), there is this critical area to consider: yes, the classroom has not undergone a physical re-design, but perhaps it doesn’t need one. When the door closes, it has the potential to be a space for transcendent encounters between the participants IF the oppressive effects of the fear that is instilled by the dominant educational system in both student and teacher — the fear of nonconformity, the fear of personal idiosyncrasies, and the fear of the unknown — if the fear is mitigated. I believe this fear is a result of the accumulation of pathological (unbalanced) relationships that are mandated between humans when operating in hierarchic situations. If, as a facilitator more “reflections on the classroom”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

shifts and changes

three months out from accident/surgery and all reports are positive from Dr. Papadopoulos. he was busier than last appointment, but he gave the essential prognosis that I can wean myself from the brace and swim, hike, and so on. good deal. it comes off as much as possible. which may be a slow process, it has grown to fit, muscles succumbing to laze and sprawl in the molded plastic casing.

retro-fitting the travelog — now back to December 2000. about half-way, though the first half is probably twice the volume of text than the latter half. doubt I will get the whole thing done. it is a legacy project.

pondering how it is that I have not brought more relevant experiences into this travelog. the last decade of my trajectory is relatively singular, and has crossed the paths of a great many of those who are greater in the eyes of the mass pay-per-view. nothing rubbed off. or only a little.

it could be that, as with the subject of my inquiry — the continuum of human relation — I tend to take a relationist rather than a reductionist approach. that is, allowing a text (better yet, speaking!) to generate from the complex and dynamic space of the human connection rather than making a series of overarching reductions of that Other, through the encounter. hmmm. it is this pathway which almost requires an abandonment of social relevance, except as a chance by-product. there will be unprecedented outcomes.

it is exactly this reductionist approach which brings massive social rewards: the compressing/re-stating/re-creation of lived presence as completely embedded in the social system. indeed, this IS the essence of fame. the generation of parallel (yet seemingly convergent) pathways which appear known, or previously experienced (social structure is predicated on shared experience). when there is an encounter with an Other who, on examination, does not share any of the abstracted pathways of life-experience, we feel uncomfortable, distanced, and afraid. through the “getting-to-know” process — a process of trying to locate within the Self and the Other common pathways and patterns of being — if we are not successful in finding any shared pathways, then the social dimension of the relation is doomed. we are forced to simply be in the moment, in a fearful and unknowable sequence of moments that have no predictable outcome. “breaking-the-ice” — looking for the flow of shared life by breaking through the stasis and reification of socialization (judging on looks, on possessions). looking at life passing on around through the (distorted) socialized eye. seeing only the known, blocking out any confrontation of the unknown.

a couple Latino guys come to deliver the firewood. my ears are wooden. hard to understand them. not able to dredge up some English, and not used to hearing the Spanish, though I can understand when one of them translates to the other.

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

Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs)

this mornings research through the landscape of information theory in biology, neurobiology, and genetics brings me to many places, including the following. rhetorical clusters.

(learn more)
nomological emergence, nonformal patterns, mereological emergence, feminist science scholarship, mechanism schemata, statistical relevance relationships, teleosemantic information, nomological supervenience, emergent with respect, successful intertheoretic reduction, mereological supervenience, basic physical parts, epistemological emergence, pointer observable, textbook semantics, biorthogonal decomposition, ceteris paribus problem, reasoning from data, causal mechanical model, qualified ceteris paribus, criteria for lawfulness, algebraic states, phenetic species, process structuralists, representational items

 
last day of swimming at the college pool. closing for a year’s worth of re-modeling. been using this pool for many hundreds of kilometers over the 20 years visiting this place.

posted
  • place: Grand Falls, Arizona

sacrifice: Ya’ a’ te’ eh

sacrifice, Ya’ a’ te’ eh (Grand Falls), Arizona, April 2005

The most sacred of places is made powerful by the history, stories, songs and prayers it contains. As we see this place, it is an experience of awe and gratitude. It is as if the Holy People are physically comforting us, encouraging us, smiling at us, strengthening us. That Diné Tah (the land of the Navajo people, the Diné) seems an empty, barren place suits us—we are among the most fortunate people in the world because of it. — Luci Tapahonso

A successful trip with Uncle Al to Grand Falls, and with last night’s rain and full moon, the falls were a torrent of mocha-red water.

posted
  • place: Akureyri, Iceland
  • enclosure: https://neoscenes.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2004/10/20041023_mil_ind_speech.mp3 14572916 audio/mpeg

until that day

Check out this 10-minute farewell speech by an outgoing US president. And you might understand better the position that we are in today with the US internal (and consequently, external) politics dominated by the military-industrial complex. pretty surprising, considering who it is coming from. General Dwight Eisenhower. but the mapping out of the consequences of allowing a society to be under the shadow of this agglomeration is chillingly prophetic. The situation is grave. And I DID cast a vote in this election, after some years of not doing so, based on my experiences in the 1980 presidential campaign which was a farcical face-off between Carter and Ray-Gun, with John Anderson making the most credible and successful campaign as an independent candidate to date. I worked as campus rep for Anderson, met him a couple times, and saw clearly that the electoral college system was stifling democratic expression in the country. It’s good to see that the whole structure is under deep scrutiny these days, now in Colorado and California (Maine and Nebraska already award proportional electoral college votes based on popular votes). Scrapping it would at least bring a superficial element of democracy back into a system that is hardly democratic in the sense of one-man-one-vote. Instead, direct or indirect cash reserves are the true test of a candidates viability (not intelligence or fitness for the job), and campaigns burning up billions of dollars in media propaganda confirm that only those with access to extreme wealth have any possibility of acceding to power. That base fact along with the rapid evolution of the realities of life in the US to a psychical space of absolute fantasy through the power of wholesale mediation of what once was direct human connection.

posted
  • place: Akureyri, Iceland

modest needs lavishly met

the national teacher’s union has gone on strike, closing all elementary and middle schools in the entire country. clearly recall, in the months preceding my ‘official’ departure from this country in 1995, there was a 6-week long strike of all teachers across the country including we who were working at what is now the National Academy. the only thing that the Prime Minister had to say was that he was happy that the government was saving so much money in with-held pay for the teachers. millions a day. yippee! in some quarters he’s called “little Hitler” for his stature and his contemptuous and power-mongering behavior. I’m not really following the politic so much while I am here, too many other things to deal with. but it seems this is a another surfacing of what I considered a very backward attitude about education in Iceland generally. already the system is weighed down by the Scandic/Lutheran socialist mentality that everyone should be the same, so that students with a special talents, skills, and interests are in no way encouraged to develop those areas, rather they are discouraged into conforming with the average. successful and talented people more often than not leave the country — this in contrast to the general US situation of regimented hyper-competition which is equally warping.

still pondering the text about Robert Irwin, whose guest-lecture I missed, out of busy-ness, when I was teaching at CU in 2003. had I been more familiar with his work I would have definitely been there. happened on a copy of Lawrence Weschler’s book on Irwin, “Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees” sitting on a shelf at the residency flat.

equinox, but no balance here.

posted
  • place: Uncompahgre National Forest, Colorado

Lizard Head

the 4th of July weekend starts up. a cold night, clear, almost full moon, and without the fly on the tent, it’s bright and chilly inside. up at 0700 to stash the tent in the back of the truck and head out. the drive up 535 and the West Dolores River is pure Colorado. we stop for breakfast in a high meadow below Lizard Head Peak (at 13,113 feet), a 5-point stag wanders across the greenery in front of the car. the route then passes near Telluride, another one of those monetary vortices on Colorado, with multi-million-dollar homes blotted around the landscape. then through Ridgeway, in very dry piñon country. a stop at the Natural Food Store, a laid-back place, opened right at 10 am when we arrived, the whole business is for sale, hmmm, an interesting opportunity. then on up into the Uncompaghre National Forest. we find a pull-off near Cimarron Fork rather than staying in a campground. skies are showing flows of high-altitude smoke from what must be large and hot fires to the south west. most likely Arizona fires have spread and increased in number. the sky to the southwest fades to a reddish-grey behind Lizard Head and Dolores Peak and there is deep atmospheric haze everywhere.

we are near the road, and as this is the Friday before the most popular summer holiday weekend, there is constant traffic of ATV’s, RV’s, jeeps, and motocross bikes. why no mufflers on the motocross bikes? I’d like to pipe the exhaust manifold through the riders’ ears instead, using the vacuous cavity between the ears as a resonant chamber.

the west is in my blood. despite any anger, fear, happiness, success, or whatever. but anyway, can’t really speak here about be-ing.

Loki reads The Lord of the Rings aloud last night before bed, and now again this afternoon.

posted
  • place: Suomenlinna, Finland

microphysics & son(net) subterfuge

Manu sends an image from TRyPTiCHON, with Amanda and I standing after the performance. a blue-Light special.

Foucault falls into my hands, though I am not particularly fond of the French School of philosophy, or, maybe to say it more concisely — I dislike the widespread invocation of his name. but, a book from the library is here, so I pick it up. immediately the term microphysics pops out from the intro. along with the observation by the editor that Foucault’s work never was successful in addressing the dynamic of social change and the autonomous nature of social action. ahah. my model does this explicitly! another spray of Lighter fluid on the fire kindling under my thesis. doubts remain, many, but as I bang words around, there seems some hope that this task gets done.

dinner last night with some of the other residents.

and then, the thesis issue keeps popping up.

Certainly, fantastic theories must not be arbitrarily invented contrary to the regularity of experience; nor must there be any departure from the harmony of Nature, since she tends to be simple and always consistent with herself. — Isaac Newton

cranking with Josephine in Amsterdam on the dress rehearsal for Son(net) Subterfuge which takes place tomorrow evening. a distributed dance/network happening, I’ll be supplying one of two incoming audio/video mixes that Jos will re-mix to be projected into the dance performance piece in Waag’s Theatrum Anatomicum. everything was stable last night. knuckles rasping to a bloody pulp on wood — to ensure the same tonight…

posted
  • place: Bremen, Germany

re:sorb

a long day and the end of a long electric week that ends up behind the Bahnhof, downtown, underground, a throbbing d’n’b scene. with the informatik posse re:sorb doing the vj-ing. I’m the guest. groove. so many grooves grooved upon, grooved through, in the last decades. but it’s the same, different, each time, the focus, the concentration, the groove. it makes something happen. here and there. in a groove. to be taken very seriously. loud pictures and all.

and windows open on future praxis. embodied mind praxis the most important route.

the workshop is incredibly successful, thanks to the dedication and open-ness of the crew. again, a series of in-spiring tableau. free-wheeling conversations, the efficacy of the dialogue assignments are clearly demonstrated. optimal situation. Frieder’s facilitates a true trans-disciplinary program — experimental even though it’s at one of Germany’s most liberal universities — drawing an eclectic group of students who are able to care for themselves in a way that those embedded in the US system may no longer.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

Mohammed

possibly en route soon. nature steps in. dumps a couple meters of snow. the easy transit turns into a logistical gamble… the trees along the creek crack and groan under the weight of the wet spring snow, many fall. traversing the parking lot, there is a sedan trying very unsuccessfully to park. I approach the car and ask if I can help — the guy, Mohammed, turns out to be from Egypt, hardly knew snow, this was clear. nice to make that transcultural mapping, given this fuckin’ war looming.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

event horizons

peristalsis. purge that machine could never achieve. only Light is left. full moon, pull neck back and gaze up. perihelion. azimuth. traverse no azimuth. an old phrase that crept into mind during the winter nights of Iceland. only words here, no blog. no trend-spotting, no riding choking waves of socialized enigma. only transience.

the governor of Colorado says that 300 million in state debt will come from higher education. (because the higher-education sector opposes his policies.) so, I begin to pack bags and chart routes to familiar and unfamiliar ports starting in July. Leubeck will be one stop. there will be many, as it was before. nomadism becomes a partner with networking. and the antithesis of successful integration into the system that I was programmed to perform in. outsider art.

letting notes get more and more cryptic and indeterminate. as a result of the floods of noise that arise when static social embeddedness increases. walk with the flux. feed on the flow, drown in the flood, speed up to “c,” and watch it all reduce to null. flatten and spread into a now of forever. and a place of only here. singularity. trip on event horizon, bruise the shin even as the Lights go out.

dream-forge. and the realization that only great loss, those shivering moments caught replaying between dream and dream, will transform, or, no, they will not. they will only amplify the emptiness. there is little left to do.

posted
  • place: en route Durango - Golden, Colorado

pilgrimage north-east

flickering times. a month of brilliant sunrises, a month full of stress. some enjoyment, as per usual, though not enough. slingshot north and east to the Front Range, propelled by various portents of success and survival. across Indian Lands, regenerating the rolling vision quest. through the mountains, in the chill of an un-heated car, thanks to a leaky heater valve on the interior heater unit. Wolf Creek Pass. and the ritual stop at the Center of the Universe. leaving a whisker from Yokono there in the artesian fountain — Yokono who narrowly escaped euthanasia-by-injection last Saturday as the vet was too busy. poor beast. she has been suffering of late. took her in for a haircut which leaves her ego a bit bruised, but otherwise she gets quite perky after a cut, unencumbered by pinching mattes of her long hair everywhere on her body. this time, even under her chin. age leaves her no will to groom. and then in the last days her hips seemed to be giving her significant trouble. so it went. anyway. through Durango for a brief visit with Richard and Holly and the kids. Richard on his way north and west to Seattle. on business.

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

mind-trekked

moments. wind rattling windows. a monotone voice forms opinions and reveals information on nature. but is the language natural? back to burnished sleepy skin. as the Finnish chapter rapidly comes to a close. sleeping and waking up, and the connected-disconnectedness. after jazz.

this week’s workshop in Media Lab, in the fourth day, seems to bring different energies into play, following in the steps of the explosive catalysis of last week, where students are now taking their education into their own hands, resisting the command-and-control structures and rules of the school in Tampere. last week’s workshop was the most difficult I have ever done, and, in a way, the most successful, traveling through conflict arising from the polar clash of distributed structures and hierarchical structures: resolution and dialogue brings an incredible energy source streaming.

posted
  • place: Brussels, Belgium

simply the best

cafe9.net, the final chapter. forum with the folks from around about. the city, Brussels, is moving into the next state, as that is going. European Development. mapping into the spaces of being. the view from the hotel is raucous. the day after the ending day of the networking and creativity workshop with a nice compact, concentrated group of participants. five cultures. and seven points-of-view. synthesizing. in both form and function. small successes, leading to interventions of energized sparkings. crossings, no genetic alterations. no need for that. (reading in the paper about the GM fish. (faugh!)) needing to counter these migrations and permutations of the matrix of living energy.

potato and chicken soup, a local specialty. chocolate mousse.