Some final words on the residency period:

Energy of Situation

Rather than the production of new 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).

Every social structure (or formation) requires (attentive) energy to maintain its intrinsic (or necessary, mandated, desired) order. Without a more-or-less constant influx of energy, any system will tend to greater disorder. CLUI and its constituent formal organizational expressions (residencies, exhibitions, public manifestations, participants) require a certain level of energy inflow to maintain viability at a level acceptable to both the participants and the wider socio-cultural milieu that they wish to participate in.

As a direct expression of my own long-term praxis of facilitating creative situations, I decided to approach the residency as a (direct?) service to the (overt) sustainability of the organization. By putting my life-energy/life-time into aspects of the material infrastructure, I could guarantee, in some dimension, the continuance of the social structure, albeit in a form reflecting my own judgements (based on where I injected my energy into the situation). In basic form, this process is about raising the order of particular aspects of the system. The question of which aspects of course is critical. If I do not understand the goals of the organized structure (to propagate itself, to demise in (X)(t), to re-form itself), the input of life-energy may or may not affect those goals in a positive way. Indeed, the input of energy might even thwart those outcomes. This is where robust and sustained dialogue among the participants is absolutely necessary to identify those points where energy influx is crucial and most efficient.

The question of entropy and order extends directly to all techno-social systems: fundamental thermodynamics applies across the full range of cosmological phenomena. Any technological system (so defined as a sub-set of all possible systems) requires energy input from outside its defined edges to maintain the ordered set of relations and flows that are necessary for it to exist as a (unitary) system. This applies to all systems up to and including what we have collectively labeled the military-industrial complex.

To whit, I undertook the following processes (and more): scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen floors, hands-and-knees, for several hours; wiped down most of the walls, especially the bathroom; reorganized and cleaned all shelves in the storage closet (refolding all linens, sorting dirty ones, putting extras (falling on the floor) into the trailer; sorting and checking all cleaning supplies); scrubbing the shower, sink, toilet; vacuuming entire floor, walls, ceiling, window frames, vents, etc with the shop-vac; wiping down all furniture; organizing and cleaning desk drawers; rearranged the furniture for maximal productivity; checked all electrical equipment, rearranging for ease-of-use; arranged library materials; sorted, (re)labeled file material; zip-lock-bagged cables in cable drawer; thoroughly cleaned the south-facing (and most north-facing) windows inside-and-out; replaced all window screening; cleaned all window frames on the interior; sorted and cleaned all kitchen-ware; cleaned the refrigerator and stove-top; cleaned microwave and all kitchen shelves; re-mounted the fire-extinguisher in a more available location; removed, scrubbed, and replaced the window blinds; raked the immediate back-yard (south); cut weeds and raked immediate front (north) yard; shop-vac’ed the trailer interior; leveled the wooden walkway to the trailer; swept the patios, collected all clothes-pins and put them on the clothes-line; arranged collected rocks on deck; cleaned telescope, fixed mounting; worked (unsuccessfully on web-cam); screw-nailed external trim in numerous places; scrubbed the exterior of the front door, repaired the interior window frame of the door; tightened bolts wherever possible; spray painted desk and several chairs (removing rust first); raked and leveled area between fence and pedal-car garage; picked up all major flotsam and jetsam accumulated in yard; organized and cleaned all media equipment; etc, etc, etc… (didn’t clean under the fridge or stove, though, nor did I tack down the rest of the linoleum … something for the future or so)

In the workshop: organized the pegboard with appropriate tools; vacuumed the entire space; organized the scrap lumber, scrap piping and metal; gathered all 4×8-foot sheets of drywall and plywood; gathered all screws/nails in one area, partially organized them; re-shelved all electrical, plumbing, other materials; organized all materials stored in rafters; gathered and sorted all tools in desk unit; cycled all rechargeable battery drives for tools; etc, etc, etc…

What affect this energy injection will have on the continuance of the organization is indeterminate: moot, relative, and subjective. It will affect the organization in some way, as will it affect the trajectories of those who come after me.

Early Confucian writings point to the “organization of things in organic categories” as a fundamental in dealing with the cosmos as a primary phenomena surrounding and enveloping life. Organizing is an intensely idiosyncratic process which, at the same time, is deeply linked to techno-social structures and their impression on participating individuals. One normative principle is like-with-like combined with some aspects of use and functionality. Moving from home to home with a frequency that is far greater than the norm, I note the similarity and differences in organizational strategy and behavior among a wide variety of individuals. My primary criteria for organizing is grounded in the functional philosophy of (engineering) optimization. This is the same process which drives wide swathes of the techno-social — the concentration of stuff to be formed and projected, deployed, into the technologically more complex future.

Of course, there is the fundamental question of long-term sustainability — in the sense that public attention drawn to the organization in its educational role (or role creating novel configurations of information/wisdom, and energized matter), this attention may then can be converted to abstracted fiscal instrument which is subsequently converted to maintenance versus direct application of the artists-in-residence in maintenance labor. It depends on whether one chooses a localized maintenance cycle or a more involved (and perhaps less efficient conversion cycle).

Now, in concert with this level of physical ordering action, I tapped into, literally, many of the myriad manifestations of the military-industrial flows that were converging and passing-through Wendover. I drew energies off in the form of images and sounds to be re-constituted in the web domain for public sampling. At some level, my deep familiarity with both the existence of these techno-social formations and the sampling of the same brought up some elements of tedium in the process — and a concern that in the mere documentation, recording of the techno-social configurations for display on a chief element of the master’s house itself (here), I was not only not contributing to the demise of such a system, but worse, was contributing to its continuance. No answers to that, the only pathway is the critical engagement and continuance of dialogues surrounding the ongoing situation in the widest sense.

And a final comment: The level of dust and dirt could be seen as a metric of encroaching macro/microscopic disorder. ‘Wind’over, as a locus of chaotic social and natural flows, exists in an increasingly entropic regime. Inexorable decline of order is the order of the day today, everyday, in the state of mind, state of be-ing that is Wendover. When the energy out-go exceeds the in-flow, Wendover will gradually return to the ground state of high-desert solitude. Perhaps Lake Bonneville will once again fill up, or the stresses of the extensional tectonics will cause a full spreading center to develop, and Wendover will be only a down-dropped graben flanked by plenty of volcanic activity.

Simple. Complex. Order. Disorder. Attention, focus, concentration.

Finally depart, making last-minute passes across all the place. Ship-shape, single-wide shape. Good enough for the next artist coming through. Head out by around noon, tired of waiting on the road to Echo Park to open after these repeated waves of late spring storms rolling through. Head south to follow the southern boundary of the Dugway site, through Gold Hill, in that frontier mode, rough, and the mountains have all been dug up, mined out. Some tough looking abodes, apparently there are a few people who live there year-round, it’s gotta be tough. Join the Pony Express Route at Callao, head east to the Wildlife area, windy more or less, mostly more. Callao is really a frontier outpost. About 8-10 ranch families. No store, no gas, no nuthin,’ just the ranches clustered around some arable land at the foot of the spectacular Deep Creek Mountains (which are higher than the Wasatch in Eastern Utah! The Pony Express Route is an even more strange communications artifact, but one that resonated long in the US imagination, though it lasted only a couple years in actuality — made obsolete by the telegraph cable. But the idea of riding across this landscape in 12-mile spurts (a healthy horse has to stop after that distance when running full-tilt), well, it’s something.

Over night at the Dugway Geode Mines, pick around a bit in the gathering twiLight, but am pretty tired after the drive. Quiet night, though there are threatening clouds rolling through from time-to-time. It’s always tough to pick a place out there to camp at there are no accessible trees, nor even vegetation above the knees, hardly the ankles! Always have the feeling of being exposed.

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

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

Pick this night to sleep in the CLUI southbase unit as I had to return some equipment down there. It’s the first night possible to do it after the occupying troops retreat to where-ever they came from. The wind is howling all night long, threatening to take the whole Quonset to … Kansas. Bad nights sleep, still blowing in the morning, and most the day, gusting up to 50+ mph, ach. Dust, and noise. Would have been nice to hang around here for some days and enjoy the further isolation (and distance towards darkness, away from the casino glare!).

I chance to spot the raven squeezing through a small gap where the square-ended galvanized panel meets the arching roof. Bully fer ‘im! Then, later, I see them resume their shuttle flights to and from the hangar, going through that one gap and possibly another at the other end somewhere. Smart birds.

Re-construction is continuing on the Enola Gay Hangar almost constantly. All the new windows are finally in, the wing areas seem to be in order with their new galvanized sheeting. A couple days ago, the last gaps in the sheeting on this end and the far roof have been put in place. So, what of the ravens and their constant efforts to build a nest (and hatch chicks perhaps?) somewhere inside? They are now gone. I felt a little ill when I saw that the construction crew was going at the remaining gaps in the sheeting, knowing it would cause a huge disturbance in the lives of the ravens. Okay, to be sure, they would likely not have been nesting here in the flats if the building had not been constructed here to begin with — humans had already caused a significant distortion in the flows of this place — life does that, always. I noticed for a couple days the ravens sitting on the roof, but no more of the flying back and forth by the window of the residency. This is a huge loss, and I wonder if anyone else has thought about this as an affect of the restoration process?

The platoon practices having their fixed machine-gun and observation emplacement attacked from a line of tamarisk bushes about 100 meters north towards the rail line and the interstate. Overhead, fighters prowl and engage. The heavy machine gun shakes the windows. The assault rifles sound like small fire-crackers in comparison.

Apocalyptic. Huge wind storm, driving wind upwards from the playa to the black clouds collected over the ranges. Wind. Then, much later in the evening, the air becomes heavy on the lungs, and a fine powdered dust hangs in the more still air, like a fog, but dust, powdered mountains, air-borne terrain. It is dark, lightning and thunder shuffles in the background, unseen, muffled behind the curtain of dislocated earth hanging in the air. Eyes sting, nose waters, pressure heavy on the lungs, body recalls the Great Sydney Dust Storm of ’09, sleep is disturbed so the reading of Augustus continues, more on that later.

Many other events and actions go un-commented-upon, so far. And there are more sounds to upload, along with numerous time-lapse sequences. These seem most apropos to the time here. Watching the weather — back to the “window weather’ concept.

Back down to Blue Lake for another definitive workout doing the full length of the lake twice. The far end is shallow and covered with a fine mud with nodules of organic material, almost like crypto-biotic soil, and extending the hand into the mud, it’s warm, though I can’t tell whether that is an affect of the heat-flow driving the upwelling action that has generated the spring, or merely sun-warmed sediment. The water temperature is perfect, right around 82F, with the air temp at 50F, a great combination for working out.

There is a shallow play of fear when getting into the water — snakes? big fish? underwater dangers? Loch Ness monsters? It’s deep and not absolutely clear as it normally is because of the heavy wind and dust. The depth is indicated, though, through the deepness of the blue. In the middle it feelsdeep: gravitational fluctuation operating on the body. While overhead, the F/A-18′s fight gravity and each other.

Then a short photo trip to do a portrait of Wendover Will and some images of the casino landscaping. Plenty of material there! But somehow I am tired of simply illustrating western society in wasteful and dis-connected abandon. I’ve seen too much of it, and there simply is too much out there!

The choppers take off in formation at 09:00 to the west, towards the Toano Range. No decent audio of that as the H4-Zoom is completely worthless recording anything in the wind, a constant feature of life here in Wendover (Wind-over). Really a drag, so that no decent outdoor recordings can be made, period. I just can’t justify the USD 75.00 wind sock, although if the effort is being made to do all this recording to begin with, what’s the point having lousy equipment? Of course, there’s always a higher-end regarding tools. And access to various steps on that sliding scale of quality is largely determined by affiliation to various levels of participation in the techno-social system. Consumer, pro-sumer, employee of a national broadcasting service. And the level of use of archive material depends strongly on the relative quality of the equipment used in the recording process. ach. It comes back to the issue of controlling natural energy flows through technology. The more energy I can exert (read: deploying more expensive systems), the more order I can apply to the system. More signal, less noise.

Today, a group of large Winnebago’s towing large trailers descend around the Enola Gay hangar, spread their leveling legs, expand their living-room sides, deploy external camping chairs, and unfurl their shade awnings. In the large trailers are a range of amateur racing vehicles. Mostly stock cars with over-amped engines. A huge course is set up on the near taxi-way.

Meanwhile, at South Base, a contingent of active Army troops is engaged in a live-fire exercise, complete with fire-finding radar systems and a half-dozen porta-potties, everything obscured in form through the ripple of heat-waves coming from runway one and two and the old taxiways between here and there. In early evening, a contingent of UH-60 Blackhawks come in to land along with a handful MH-6 Little Bird Special Ops ‘choppers.

When a highly-ordered techno-social system meets a disordered system, what are the results? Is it similar to an osmotic membrane with more and less salty water on either side, the fresher water is drawn through the membrane to dilute the salty water? Is the energy-based order diluted and lessened through the contact? A combat situation is, itself, a hybrid sequence of events transitioning between order and disorder at many scales over time– with the different actors intent on maintaining an in-flow of energy in order to maintain their order. It is the ordered expression of collective techno-social energies with the goal of decreasing the order of the opponents system — whether at the single body scale, or at the scale of the wider techno-social infrastructure.

In the case of Afghanistan, the points at which the advanced ordered system (US) can apply weapons to increase the disorder of the opposing system (Taliban) are so limited to be almost point-less. The Afghani society has so minimal an ordered social infrastructure to be destroyed and the relation of individuals to the destruction of their own body-systems (in the case of the martyr), makes the conflict literally sense-less and not win-able in any classic way — where winning is the imposition of a critical level of disorder on the capabilities of the opposition to express concentrated energies that will disrupt the order of ones own system.

A nice hike with Neal, his last day before heading back to London (despite the volcano!) into the Toano Raptor Observation Area at the south end of the Toano Range. No big raptors except for a turkey vulture who didn’t fly away from a sheep carcass at the side of the track in until we were just 20 feet away (oi, pew!!). That’s as close as I’ve been from one of those huge birds. The hike in gets into snow pretty quickly, including corn snow coming down. But the sun is warm on the south-facing side of the canyon, and with the elevation gain, the view to the east over the playa and all the way to the Wasatch Range is fine. Apparently in the fall, during migration, more than 50,000 eagles, hawks, and falcons pass through the area.

Today, upon waking, there are two buses parked to the west of the hangar, a bit later, numerous SUV’s begin to pull up along with several official SWAT command vehicles and their teams from Winnemucca, Elko, and Wendover. It’s SWAT play. How to deal with a bus-load of terrorists/hostages or so. Several squads are lectured and engage in practice drills for the morning. I had originally been told by the airport management folks that there were going to be live-fire exercises at South Base, so we were surprised when this began to unfold in the back yard.

There is the fascination of playing Army, recalled from early days in the Maryland woods beyond the pond, beyond the corn fields, into unknown territories of abandoned farmhouses and hunting camps. Learning to make the sound of a gun and of explosions. And here, older boys, men, with very fancy toys, playing for their lives and the lives of their charges. Learning to stay alive, to save life. Learning to kill, or be killed. Learning to protect the innocent and kill the profane.

Brutal sand/wind storm (again, what else is new in “Wind-over”). I have been almost completely scuppered in doing sound work here by the incessant wind (and not having a decent wind-snout for the Zoom H4. I thought Iceland was windy, well, this place is a close competitor. No trees, and the contrast of the flat playas between the relatively high mountains makes for some adiabatic action combined with a series of major Pacific storm fronts pulsing through. Noting when in (sparsely) wooded mountain valleys of the Toano Range, there isn’t the intensity of blast — the opposite occurs on the air base which is on the edge of a playa that extends 200 km to the north, 200 km to the south, and 150 km to the east: flatness breeds velocity. Velocity and sustainability — it goes on and on with only occasional respite.

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

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

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

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