old networker-friend, Paul Rutkovsky (of floridada) and I have some nodes in common in Lithuania of all places. he was just there and here in Berlin as well. he sends this invitation from a recent show of drawings on paper that he had in Vilnius.

suspended ambronesia, the whole week gets screwed up. and what do I have to show for it? nada. started off good at the Institute meeting on Monday, giving a short presentation to students on the block seminar that I’ll be doing in early June Sustainable Creative Presence :: Distributed Be-ing. have a few conversations afterward with some interested students. then a brief faculty meeting that is conducted mostly in English to my astonishment (for my sake).

last day spent at ISNM yesterday, apparently for ever. the school is in its final stage of collapse. although I wasn’t deeply involved in the establishment process, I did have some input when Hubertus, the founder, was framing the concept and curriculum back in, what, 1999, when he was in Kiel. or so. it’s clear why it’s collapsing in that the local politic is too conservative, the original vision of the school was not enough to counteract this. the few remaining students are frustrated and angry at the situation, as they probably should be. interesting group of students for my seminar. oral exams which were largely counter-productive to the learning process.

not sure where the link to Michael Shanks site comes up, but the syllabus for his course Ten Things is deLightful and incisive. he’s got some really interesting thoughts on the life of objects, the presence of humans, and the history of both.

If we look at processes as well as discrete objects, we can be led into a myriad of connections and trajectories. In the heterogeneous networking that is the engineering of a thing, there is no end to ramification. An artifact disperses through its scenarios, networks and genealogies of origination, manufacture, distribution, use and discard.

Interpretation, as re-articulation, can track certain affiliations or lines of connection, as I sketched with the aryballos. There is always more that remains unsaid, unacknowledged, unseen, because interpretation may not go down a particular track. This is so evident in archaeological fieldwork, or indeed in any scientific research, where there is always a choice to be made of what matters to the research interest. What is left behind, ignored or discarded is the background noise of history and experience. This is far from inconsequential. First, because something important may have been overlooked. Science constantly takes a second look at things and finds something that was missed. Second, because things stand out as significant against this background; without it there could be no story, no message, no understanding. Third, because this is the noise of the ambient everyday work that makes society what it is; it is the noise of the life of things constantly reweaving our social fabric. — Michael Shanks

I recently tracked down Andreas Voigt, a documentary film-maker that I met back in the early 1990′s at a film festival in Reykjavík. He was present for the screening of his deeply moving black-and-white features made in and around Leipzig in the late 80′s and early 90′s during the early post-Cold Wars days (Letztes Jahr – Titanic and Leipzig im Herbst). He emails me that his most recent documentary, Mit Rentiernomaden über den Ural is on tonight. Christian and I watch while Steffi is out at choir practice. very fine work.

back in a classroom. talking about data – information – knowledge – intelligence – wisdom. signal-to-noise ratios. adaptability, chain-of-command, defined functions, trend analysis, long tail, lexis-nexus, The WELL, protocols and standards, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, social infrastructures, complexity, hierarchy, networks, order and disorder, economy of attention, business models, power, money, socially-defined exchange, globalization of culture, and so on. I am a teacher, I am only human.

Loreto Jaque, Mari-Klara Oja, Varvara Guljajeva, Steve Stein, Georges Belinga, Xiaojing Fan

conversations with Volker and others range across vast spaces of cultural, spiritual, personal, and social thought and practice. as per usual. great!

I’ve been checking brainstorms more than usual lately, jumping into discussions with Howard, Bryan, Andee and many others on the topic of academia, education, learning, teaching, students, and what a struggle it is to be involved with this sector of the techno-social system.

over in Lübeck, meet miga and then head to lunch with Andreas at Nui which I remember from the teaching at ISNM before. had to get some outline of what is happening to the slowly sinking Titanic and what is required from me when I do a short course on e-culture in the spring.

Jumana Al Isawi, David Black, Martin Coors, Okwor Franklin, Martha Friederich, Johannes Huber, Gerrit Kaiser, Thanasis Kanakis, Katharina Kessler, Efi Kontogeorgou, Katja Langeland, Selin Özçelik, Jan Rosenbrock, Janos Schwellach, Arthur Sonsalla, Matthias Staniszewski, Philipp Steiner, Özlem Sulak, Paul Wichern, Kjen Wilkens, Alexander Kitov, Ivo Schüssler

so it goes. pedagogic extravagances, personal liberties, dialogue, Light, revolution, action. and so on…

questions arising from the second round of dialogue pairs yesterday:

Why are you looking for a unified theory?

What is the significance of your octagonal earring (assuming it’s not just an accessory)?

How can the energy affect the technical model — for example, social networks in the internet?

Will we try to bring the course to a technical level in the meaning of morality or communications?

How can the energy in a field influence all points in it simultaneously — wouldn’t there be a problem with time?

How do expectations influence ourselves / our lives / our encounters with other human beings?

What if everyone shared John’s worldview, would that solve all (any?) of our problems?

If death is a catastrophe, is birth also?

Was this a day of crisis because there were different points of view in the room, or has that been a step forward?

Who can or should alter the permissions for one system to drain the energy of an other one to get stronger — without giving it back — in an unfair way: The elements of the system being drained or the elements of the unfair system?

Is there a lack of energy (flow) between the Self & the Other through digital communications?

Since we try to create a balance between “flow” and “block” in order to reach a good level, could we integrate “chaos” in this dialogue? What would the influence of chaos be?

class begins. another configuration. not so comfortable in my teaching skin after all this time away. but so far, seems to be a workable group. the vocal along with the silent. the brave and the timid. the left-brain and the right. time is the chief enemy, only five days for this one.

class begins. another configuration. not so comfortable in my teaching skin after all this time away. but so far, seems to be a workable group. the vocal along with the silent. the brave and the timid. the left-brain and the right. time is the chief enemy, only five days for this one.

clearly lost at words. in words, without words, for words, back words. energy ebbed under the circumstances. the demise of the workshop still a real bother. will be into the future. and not very auspicious first visit to Australia. perhaps the last visit.

missed Sophea today, she lagging from jets, coming the other way ’round the globe, via Delhi. worked on slow machines. after the walk to the College. jetfuel coffee and a nice muffin in one of the many cafs along the way, reading the newspaper, catching the local drift. the word ANZAC (Australia – New Zealand Army Corp) in the context of recent political scandals, historical honor and glory, contemporary resistance to the Iraq/Afghanistan crisis. nationalism? you bet!

walking back and forth trying different pathways, the row bungalows with the iron-railed porches and verandas, steel gratings on the doors, the more modern apartment blocks, slick, shiny, bright. life-style. many of the row houses are under remodeling, for sale and resale. there is a significant market, though nothing like the California frenzy. apparently people have also flocked to the huge tower blocks that fill the center of town, built in the last five or so years. where there used to be porn shops and big business districts.

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!

hmmm, combinations of local circumstances impede encounters. structural deficiencies route possible crossings into different spaces. turtle-like, looking out onto a complex and unknown landscape and socio-cultural milieu.

find any openings for contact, sussing-out, phishing, checking in, checking out. finding where there is a break in the construct, gaps. small TAZ’s crouched and ready. intervene, connect.

and on another note entirely. sadly, transcendentally. hearing on the underside of the planet. or the reverse top. as shadows point to Antarctica. another giant come to an end in this world. how to expect that another world is? or that there is some way of standing in both for more than a while.

So it goes. — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

not enough sleep after the dinner at Mokki with the Pixelache folks and the Prix Mobius people. finally caught up with Juhani who was on his way to Manchester today.

up early to meet Tapio at mbar for a short session about future polar/solar plans and dealing with future web-documentation and such.

then over to the gallery at noon to begin the final set-up. remote presence :: streaming life gets underway with preparations for the evening’s happening. all runs smoothly. except for the entire network going down about an hour before opening time. turns out to be one of those crazy glitches around a print job submitted to the wrong printer. it brought down everything for a tense 30 minutes before I could figure out what was happening. otherwise the transformation of the gallery space was completed some hours before the opening, and it looks very nice. did miss the final session of the conference with Lisa and Armin, as well as missing the last event of the Nordic VJ program. too busy.

many folks come to the opening — Antti, Bernice, Owen and his wife, Kaisu, Amos, and on. I was not so able to chat much, monitoring the outgoing streams, but the vibe was good. the sonic stream is an interesting mix, though the video input was sparse and not so electric. we would need another couple days to spruce up that medium & means. the ambient sound in the gallery is warm and party-like.

day two. Elénore catches her plane from Strasbourg, but gets tangled in security at Charles de Gaulle, missing her Helsinki flight and so I am left with a two-hour morning conference panel to anchor solo at the Goethe institute. presenting the context of the workshop and the paper that I contributed to the Pixelache publication. it goes well. although there are skeptics in the back row. not vocal, but disturbing the atmosphere by talking during much of the talk/discussion. they make no direct critique of the propositions nor contribute to the lively discussion. boring people who do that.

at another point, a bit later, someone who was to show up at placard in Kiasma isn’t able to come, so, with a little chunk of open time in my schedule I jump into the corner hot-seat and do a one-hour impromptu mix for a handful of headphone-donning folks. the sun streaming in the window, I have a good view of the Parliament building as a source of rock-solid and cubic inspiration.

Erik (aka Mr. Placard) runs the multichannel headphone mixers, the stream, and keeps an eye on the irc channel.

then, there’s Manu & Mukul along with Indigo, their young boy. hanging around waiting for the screening of their film Faceless in the Kiasma Theater.

back in Linnunlaulu, 6.5 years later. the restoration was just completed when I stayed there on the fall of 2000 for three months. but even that short a time has taken a heavy toll on the exterior. common sparrows are nesting anywhere they can squeeze a perch. little caches of twigs sprout from cracks and eaves and the balcony is warping.

Riikkaliina Turkki, Andrew Paterson, Gun Holmström, Sirpa Jokinen, Petri Kaverma, Sabrina Harri, Tomi Humalisto, Alex Berry, Christiaan Cruz, Mats Eriksson, Michael Glen, Eija Makivuoti, Mari Keski-Korsu

Workshop continues at a rare intensity. Only a good scene. Fine mix of intellects and spirits. Something good will come from this. While the situation in Sydney apparently continues to unfold, but with what characteristics and forms and potentials I do not know. There is a degree of stress heading to the unknown place.

Two participants, coming respectively from Melbourne and Southern California, used couch surfing sites for housing — I may need to make that scene in Oz if housing alternatives run out.

But the number of sand I know, and the measure of drops in the ocean;
The dumb man I understand, and I hear the speech of the speechless:
And there hath come to my soul the smell of a strong-shelled tortoise
Boiling in caldron of bronze, and the flesh of a lamb mingled with it;
Under it bronze is laid, it hath bronze as a clothing upon it. — Pythian
prophetess

No doubt a pithy oracle. Herodotus quotes. From the histories. Run across that after skyping with Loki around the histories of the Greco-Persian Wars — he saw the movie 300. Is there a difference between understanding history derived from Herodotus in translation and Hollywood scripting? Are the histories essentially the same in that they are subjective accounts of an individual as translated through a series of other individuals? As Herodotus is the primary source for any information regarding the wars, Hollywood has some relation to this, but what is the texture of relation? And the idea of telling the relation visually (and sonically) and in two hours. Complete. No answer. Though reviews point to the obvious glorification of the defeat of the Persian by the infidel hyper-militaristic Americo-Spartans.

whoa, way behind. but the email inbox gets more and more full, a tidal wave, or at least a tidal surge, about to cover nose with a sludge of glimmering words. back in Helsinki. having to take the extra time to type the word Helsinki slowly, otherwise it gets typed wrong.

workshop migrates into the second day. dialogues generate, pathways open up, words, energies are exchanged.

meet Tapio at mbar in the Lasipalatsi, where my old cafe9.net office was. the center of town, different now since the huge Kamppi underground bus terminal complex is finished. that complex is behind the Lasipalatsi, and looms like a mini-Tian’anmen (Gate of Accepting Heavenly Mandate), though the Finnish translation must be something like Gate of Accepting Earthly Commerce (Portille hyväksyä maallisen kaupankäyntiä)??

gallery space begins to acquire a lived-in look in the last couple days. Cady and Mari oversee the conversion from a booming white concrete cube into a rather comfortable space where conversations are actually possible. definitely not an optimal space. workshop begins this morning. slowly rising from the ground.

Call for Workshop Applicants:

Remote Presence: Streaming Life

Presented by John Hopkins as part of the pixelache 2007 Architectures of Participation Festival and in collaboration with Artists’ Association MUU

Dates: March 21-23 & 26-31, 2007
Location: MUU gallery & Media Base, L?nnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki, Finland
Hours: 1030 to 1630
Final Event 31 March, 2007

http://www.neoscenes.net/teach/pixel/index.php

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

In the ubiquity of networked media spaces where we distribute our wireless lives, what happens to our creative processes? How may we build a functioning architecture of participation for productive collaboration and interaction between the Self and Others?

This dynamic workshop will bring participants to a new state of awareness about their own creative practice. It will accomplish this through an exploration of human collaboration and connection within the space of networks. It explores conceptual and practical issues around creative engagement, finishing with the hands-on production of a live and online streaming-media network event with global participation.

The workshop is open to anyone from any discipline with an interest in collaboration and creative engagement at both a local and remote scale. There are NO technical background requirements. People with previous experience in streaming media, performance, digital audio and video, VJ work, etc, who wish to push their practice to a new collaborative level are also welcome.

On Saturday, 31 March, the final day of the workshop will be a live & online event. Workshop participants will not only develop digital content for the event, but will also help facilitate all aspects of it including the technical infrastructure, the local ambience, and the remote coordination.

For detailed information visit:

http://www.neoscenes.net/teach/pixel/index.php

A maximum of 15 participants will be chosen from local and international applicants with the idea to bring together a wide spectrum of cross-disciplinary energies.

THE WORKSHOP IS FREE OF CHARGE.

Those interested will need to send:

NAME:

LOCATION:

EMAIL:

Along with your reasons for interest in workshop and a brief background (studies, creative work, and activities) to:

neopixel@pixelache.ac

DEADLINE for Applications 5 March 2007.

long day! Adriene and I finally f2f before her morning class which I jumped into. traffic made our anticipated leisurely breakfast turn into a quick stop at the local Whole Foods for a turkey wrap and on direct to class. interesting group of students. I do not make a roll listing as per usual, twice now, I’ve missed that opportunity. one of the students, Tara, graciously takes me on a walking tour of campus, and a long lunch conversation.

and finally Gary and I rendezvous after 11 years passed. last time was in Baltimore WAY back or so. this time in front of the UCSD Geisel Library, hanging.

dinner with Adriene at the house of Michael Krichner and Carmen Cucina — a reception for a candidate for curator of the UCSD Art Gallery. finally met Jordan along with the curator from the SDSU Art Gallery who invited me to an artist’s talk tomorrow for the exhibition John Q. Public & Citizen Jane: Private Americans in the Political Domain.

Art, at its social core, is the trace of an engaged pathway. A pathway that conducts the circulation and exchange of creative human energies as they are attenuated by a vast range of mediative (materialized) carriers. The artist is that person who opens and offers the Self in a directed seeking: to engage in a dialogue of human 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.

our arts birthday stream goes down smoothly, though I never did succeed in tapping into the actual European Broadcasting System satellite output feed of the event. August recorded the stream file on his Linux box.

Wes invites me to jump into what turned out to be an excellent evening — cycled down to fishbon (see their blog) — a weekly salon for an eclectic group of cultural activists in Santa Barbara. the evening starts with a demo of the Wii by a local teen, then a Kung Fu demo advertising the establishment of some special courses starting in the fishbon space. Wes and a friend do a MAX/jitter visual/sonic performance, and after that I do a very short 15-minute improv with VDMX.

and shortly, my talk in the IHC:

tech-no-madic pathways: networks and sonic energy

This talk, framed in observations from 20 years in the Cultural-Industry Sector of Europe and North America, will look at the energetic intersection of body and sound in the midst of chaotic social systems and restless movement. It will doubtfully answer the following questions among a thousand others: What does it mean to be a sound artist? What is a sustainable creative practice? What are we doing here? How did it end up this way? Afterward, let’s talk!

blast not having a digital copy of this essay, but as it is one that I use in teaching on occasion, and one that brilliantly explores the spiritual dimension of the alienation of the age we are stepping through — so I type it by hand from the catalog printed by the Anthology Film Archives in New York on the occasion of a screening of Elder’s Book of All the Dead in November 1988. I was not present at that screening, but was at the prior premiere of the first 18 hours of the 40+ hour cycle which happened in the Film Studies building at CU-Boulder. there were just three of us who sat through the whole weekend event in an ancient classroom in the now-razed Film Studies Building. a handful of others made parts of the reel-after-reel intensity. it was a transformative experience — from the simple physical immersion that 18 hours of film induced, but also the visual energy from the work itself, and the intellectual rigor that was embedded into the narrative and visual contents. it has resonated for years as a source. neoscenes dreaming and the performative visual-sonic works that came around that impulse owe something deep and intangible to the Book of All the Dead. I was deLighted that Bruce assented to my hosting of the essay, adding to the small collection of ‘third-party‘ essays replicated for interest and convenience.

morning spent making a photo archive of Kevin’s work that Stefan and Ellen have. adding to the archive, not really sure how many works are out there of Kevin’s — he had a lot of cultured friends, and he liked works to go to good homes, so.

an afternoon with Josephine and Dan and the KidsConnect crew. interesting to work with 7th – 10th graders from around the metro area. I jumped in with a simple facilitation of the local human network, hearing their stories. later met the Scottish couple who are acting as advisers and tutors on the Second Life platform that is the virtual platform for KidsConnect.

to the IDC list

deciding last night not to tell the students when to arrive for morning start-up for the workshop, so they are up until 0300 or so, keeping me in uneasy slumber, Marcus as well, who ended up staying over in the dorms too. so they are nowhere in sight in the morning. after a hearty oatmeal breakfast which Marcus says is the highLight of his impromptu visit to Beroun so far, we wander out into the landscape to shoot some. ending up on a intrusive gabbro sill, standing high above the railroad station. later, all but two of the students leave for Prague, and later in the afternoon, Milos comes back from Prague, mostly for a meeting with students of the Technical University who are working on some media projects. it is disappointing that this workshop imploded. but I think it is due to the extreme fragmentation and lack of focused attention in the first two days.

later in the afternoon Dr. Cílek, the Director of the Academy of Sciences Institute of Geology pays us a visit and delivers a fascinating talk that wove the human historical, mystical, and mythological elements of the Bohemian Karst region around Beroun with the underlying geology and speleology. we were supposed to go on a day-trip with him tomorrow, but Milos had to cancel it because of a lack of interest of the students. a real shame. it was a stretching excitement to meet someone from a geological pursuit who also shared a profound interest in phenomenal life and be-ing with a clear trans-disciplinary role to re-form traditional thinking models. I would hope for another opportunity to make a tour with him. googling Silurian Devonian Beroun karst trilobite tells much about the potentials! especially the French-Czech paleontologist Joachim Barrande who generated a yet-unparalleled series of comparative studies under the title “The Silurian System of the Center of Bohemia.”

All told, the complete “Systême silurien du centre de la Bohême,” published between the years 1852-1911, consists of eight volumes in 29 tomes in quarto, 8224 pages of text and 1606 lithographic plates. It contains descriptions and figures of 4565 species, with a few exceptions all coming from the Lower Paleozoic marine beds of Bohemia.

dinner later with Milos, Boyana, and Victor at the pizzeria, after visiting a photo exhibition installed in the Lower (Prague) Gate tower of the Beroun city fortifications. a view over what once was a drawbridge. it is too damn cold for walking around.

no record… :-(

Milos and I , along with all of two students, a Czech and a German, catch the 1000 train to Beroun, up the Berounka River about 50 minutes. already this slacking show of the other 9 confirmed participants bodes ill. in the presentation yesterday, there are some glimmers of interest, but also, afterward, a student in the typical Goth black leather trench coat walks up, gets in my face, and aggressively demands what I will provide for him (later determined to be an Estonian), I turn him away when I try to briefly review the nature of an evolving distributed system, that it works only when everybody puts their attention in. he snorts and stalks off. thank god for that.

a few of the rest trickle in over the next 8 hours, but I do not want to start until I have the undivided attention of a more-or-less stable constellation of people. nothing more disturbing for concentrated focus than having to repeat the same thing over and over.

Björn Stolper, Daniel Möhlmann, Julia Heinbockel, Katrin Warda, Joost van Eupen, Silke Gennies, Zlatena Koceva, Nicole Herzlieb, Susan Traeber, Nicolas Pauluhn, Christopher Schultz, Götz Kessemeier, Astrid Mochtarram, Frank Jesgarz, Christian Schrumpf, Ramona Simon, Hashim Chunpir, Oliver Graf, Marcos Martinez, Atike Pekel, Stefan Krämer

the box proceeds as though it has found a unique energy source in the configuration of the students and the situation. although our stream is lamed by a lack of time for preparing content, the local energy is considerable.

a flu sweeps the class, knocking many people out. I felt it come on late in the afternoon yesterday, and headed home to bed, but it still comes on all day today. despite that, the day was very productive and busy with a tentative meeting with Steve’s class in Baltimore. on the way home, Martin tells me about the prevalence and common knowledge about the psilocybin mushrooms that this neighborhood, Upper Borg, is known for — at least the fields around the area. seems the psychedelic culture was widespread in Germany pretty recently.

as per usual. workshop adsorbs any spare energy away from jotting here. different dynamic than last year, but similar. workshops in Germany are always more intense as far as the intellectual challenge goes, but on my side is the pressure to challenge what are not intellectual but rather other psychic spaces. Frieder and Susi are away to Karlsruhe for his opening at ZKM, so I have a routine of walking five minutes and catching the bus at 0748 to school, 15 minutes away. not feeling up to doing the bicycle thing. too spoiled by my own mountain bike in Arizona. finally over jet lag, and caught up on sleep. and body rhythms synchronize: hunger times corresponding to feeding times.

(no)music arena started in the night and goes all day today. got a small streaming situation set up at the Academy and was testing and irc-ing with some of the other participants — Jerome, Steve, laboite, and others. I’ll do a set mid-day. then matchmaking cranks into gear in the evening. meanwhile meet with Per Erik, another workshop participant for a focused dialogue on an even-morphing range of subjects.

since the workshop unraveled in this strange dynamic at the Academy, I spent the whole afternoon with Professor Jaccheri — one of the two workshop participants — from the IT department of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. trading ideas about university existence and the facilitation trans-disciplinary art:science studies. late in the evening, the walk home over the — bridge, and to the north, faintly, the Aurora Borealis shimmers.

workshop starts. dinner with Trine. apparently the student situation at KiT is the same as before. students too ‘busy’ to attend a workshop. given that this is the only place where this has happened — twice in 4 years — I just don’t understand it. two students showed up for the first day. one of them a Spanish exchange student. and two other people from the ‘outside.’ thank goodness. else the trip ends up not really being worth it. though it’s been great meeting some new and old acquaintances in the meantime. while hardly earning my keep. such an extreme difference in the students between here and Bremen, for example, the ones here simply absent. don’t get why they are in school except for the social infrastructural value purely. which has nothing to do with art, only commerce. if they only knew. of course, there could be over-arching infrastructural issues affecting their presence. the effect that the faculty has on the long-term base emotional confidence of the students can be immense, though very hard to quantify. but absent teachers make absent students. Trondheim suffers from the drain that all the Nordic countries experience — that of having a single dominant city that is the seat of fiscal, political, and cultural power. all other cities are second-rate. so, the milieu outside urban Oslo (Stockholm, Helsinki, and Reykjavík, Copenhagen, among other small countries) is always stretched and even under threat of not remaining viable in extreme instances.

back in town. first visit in three years, since right before I went into internal exile in the US. Trine shows me around the new TEKS space (situated in the brown river-front building in the center of the photo), Espen away on necessary R&R leave for a few days before trondheim matchmaking 2004 begins Wednesday after next.

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.

some analysis of the way things went at ram6. as is common with some collective social events, the awareness of the meta-relations and the actual human dynamic was subjugated to the necessities of the material/technological infrastructure and the particularities of the social matrix it was embedded in. allowing for technical/mediative contingencies to proceed from the human needs seems to be extremely difficult because of the depth of our material conditioning. the general vibe of the event overall is positive, progressive, and dynamic. the material situation, the technological infrastructure, was satisfactory. it would have been nice to have a bit more group interaction to set up a vibe that would resonate through the disparate pathways, to be re-measured by another group interaction at the end (the campfire was probably it, but a bunch of us old folks split before that happened ’cause the food arrived too late to the forest happening.

meet Mindaugas at Cafe Intro where he was in the process of taking down a show that Roman had curated. his sister is there along with a friend. nice to meet her, having known mi_ga so long. later at Cafe Intro there is a sonic evening that Derek and Sara organized. it formed something of an ending for ram6 although some people had already left, but a good moment to have those closing dialogues before the remaining folks re-distribute to remote locations.

Nerijus Narmontas, Evelyn Müürsepp, Wojtek Mejor, Jurij Dobriakov, Julijus Balcikonis, Zivile Kucharskiene, Kiril Panteleev, Juha Hytonen, Dorinel Marc, Victoria Brannstrom, Mirjam Wirz, Juha Franssila, Renata Sukaityte, Maria Bustnes, Milda Auginaityte

first day of the actual workshop comes and goes. as is always the case, the energy of the situation varies. changes. while the Lithuanian basketball team plays China, Gedimas introduces Geert Lovink for a lecture. the topic, “Critical Internet Culture: Internet Government and Civil Society.” a mapping of the geo-politic of the Internet.

ram6 starts. breakfast brings many folks out from closed hotel doors. Nomeda said that we are the only people checked into the hotel for the duration — it gives the feeling of a large house. soaked on the walk up the hill to the Contemporary Arts Center. find Kim working so we go have lunch until the opening session where the workshop presenters introduce our respective plans to let attendees know what they can choose from. as usual my speaking is a bit cryptic, but there is a line of people afterward asking good sharp questions and it ends up I have an overflow. a bit wishing to be an attendee only, though, to catch Kim’s, or Sara and Derek’s workshop, for my own selfish reasons. and with thoughts to tomorrow, making the core decision to follow praxis by theory, rather than the other way around, at the beginning of the workshop tomorrow morning. simple risk, though taking risks in a teaching situation is something that is more than less difficult, relatively, though already the deep risks inherent in many previous workshops prove the worth of each step in the direction a distributed and autonomous learning. facilitator, not teacher. or so.

also was thinking I have to improve the content of the travelog photos. they seem stale. I don’t do many portraits because the medium of digital snapshots seems so … unstable. and unsatisfactory – primarily because of the delay, the ponderous e-lapse from the time the shutter release is depressed and when the electronic shutter activates. impossible. so I stick with architecture and static life.

after a shaky start on Friday (combination of not enough sleep, early rising, not enough food, water). today flows. rainy outside, sun now.

This seminar/workshop explores some particular pathways and practices of creative activities with a close look at the impact of contemporary technological developments. It proposes and critically examines implementations and strategies for sustainable and relevant social engagement as mediated by technological networks.

Especially important is the establishment of an in-class situation for open dialogues on personal worldviews and experiences. This distributed human situation will be the core source for the seminar and will allow us to explore topics that are directly relevant to the practices of the individual participants. Another words, the actual form of the workshop will, by necessity, reflect the content to be discussed.

Participants are asked to share their experience-base and engage in attentive and focused discussion about the ideas that arise in the moment, and to target specific issues that inspire, challenge, or block their creative engagement of technology. These programs tend to be highly flexible and dynamic, with uncertain outcomes. But it is exactly in those un-defined spaces that novel and life-changing events occur.

The seminar facilitator, John Hopkins, is an experienced international artist, teacher, and technologist who is most currently working with live/online collaborative performance actions — occupying the social spaces represented by global telecom networks and facilitating creative action in those spaces. He maintains an extensive web space at http://neoscenes.net. Particularly relevant as an introduction to the seminar is a brief article that he wrote about his praxis for the AcousticSpace 2002 entitled “1+1=3″. That article may be found at http://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/xchange3.html. Documentation of recent activities may be found via his CV at http://neoscenes.net/info/cv/index.php.

Maris Korrol, Rait Siska, Külli Mariste, Piibe Piirma, Krista Thomson, Lilian Sokolova, Marko Uibo, Andrea Girich, Maiu Kurvits, Janar Puuram

so. ethernity today. good food, good energy. good fun. good.

Kerstin Eberhardt, Mieke Dahlhans, Stefan Krämer, Maria Iqbal, Saira Rana, Marcos Martinez, Melvin Ochsmann, Jan Panhoff, Henning Petersen, Hendrik Poppe, Jens-Holger Streck, Nils Stritzel, Katrin Warda, Till Wargalla, Florian Wiencek, Tanveer Mustafa, Ahsan Fayyaz, Jörg Meyer, Kristian Gohlke

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.

Abdul Ahad, Alma Azzoni, Armen Kasamanyan, Arthur Max, Boy Avianto, Brian Egan, Fernanda Scur, Sreenu Vemu, Vlada Zlatova, Wendy Ann Mansilla, Cornelia Schrader, Denise Brennan, Greg Judelman, Gerd Stodiek, Martin Stumpf