With H. T. Odum’s conceptual support, I would opine that these conditions can only arise in a system which has a glut of energy (at all levels of structure) which is illustrated (at one level) by the increase of obesity in the oil-glutted ‘developed’ world. There is one thing that creates wealth and that is access to energy to maintain the ordered structure of a complex social system or to maintain a position towards the top of a social hierarchy. And while cash is convertible to energy when the social system issuing the abstracted fiscal instrument holds the trust of its participants, when the s**t comes down, cash doesn’t help, only access to power/energy in supra-concentrated units (weapons!) will save.

Most of us are in such positions or situations, relatively, and are communicating here through a techo-social system which is absolutely dependent on that energy glut for its coherent order and in a situation when the energy glut tightens to an energy lack, you can be sure that we all will be sliding down, relatively, to a lesser state. Personally I believe that the current ‘economic’ situation happening is because we have reached a point where the hydrocarbon-fired social order is coming to an end. (This partly caused in the West by the rise of China’s demand for hydrocarbons, but globally by the condition of use equaling production, and new reserves being less than any predicted future use.)

No techno-social system is free from this thermodynamic reality, ever, and furthermore, energy availability is the foundation upon which all ideological, political, economic, security, and other realities play out.

And, as I was going to say in response to Brian’s recent reply — To be sure, collapse, contraction, stability, or other characteristics of (social, ‘natural,’ cosmological, all!) structures are primarily determined by their access to usable energy input, so it is, again, important to understand this first, and that the ‘economic’ is merely an abstracted social construct which, at root, may be quite disconnected from the energy reality of a system. The fiscal obscures the actuality, and this can lead to incredible errors in judgment by entire social systems as well as individuals.

Thinking in the moment, it occurs to me that an explanation of the mortgage ‘crisis’ in the US could be that, given the conversion rate between the embodied life-energy/life-time of an individual (home buyer) and their relative economic ‘power’ there was a substantial gap. Another words, an individual could not, given their own energy sources, bring together the energy to create a house of, say, 4000 ft2 (400 m2). In an system where there is a glut of energy, that excess of energy can plug the gaps in an individuals energy lack, and allow them to exceed what would be their normal status without the glut. This same argument would hold for all scales — where, say, the US military is in the exact same situation. W/o the oil glut there simply would be no US military (of the magnitude that it is)! The gap between a ‘normal’ military appendage and an obscenely bloated and aggressive one is excess energy… (in this case, the energy availability has a parallel mapping: testosterone::individual aggressivity — oil::techno-social aggressivity).

(speaking as a former explorationist for a major US oil company … )

(By oil glut, I mean the entire history of hydrocarbon usage which concentrated in (created!) the ‘developed’ world during the last 200 years)

Watching the Tao is better than watching the Dow!

sotto voce: If you want to dig (no pun intended) into this more, I’d highly recommend this audio/video panel at the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

http://csis.org/event/rare-earth-elements

It’s a good in-depth intro to this issue by a panel of three experts who look at the contemporary situation with rare earth elements (which do not include niobium and tantalum from coltan deposits). But it is basically the same idea/situation — in the sense of there being a rare resource, in demand by a multiplicity of large forces/powers, in places where local people are considered to be disposable commodities.

(I am not promoting their opinions, but they do describe the situation well from their point of view, both historical and today’s view)…

I believe it is worth it to consider the principle, not the details, in these areas of activism, as EVERY material that the techno-social system uses for re-forming matter causes a similar distortion of localized systems: That is, look around your home, what’s made out of metal, plastic, chemicals, paper, wood… etc etc, it all requires machines to make which require more metals, plastics, chemicals, etc. etc… which make necessary the entire range of the global extractives industry which is closely allied to WAR (of every kind — both aggressive overt weapons war as well as slow and equally deadly environmental degradation warfare).

Humans do this. It is not avoidable. The only factor that we have the power to influence is *how much* we use — of course, this *how much* does imply choosing one type of device over another. It also places the choice directly in our power. We can make choices, we can influence others to make choices. But as long as this discussion proceeds here on this (telecom-based) mailing list, we are being somewhat hypocritical. Of course, educating each other is paramount, but the best teaching methodology is to ‘practice what one preaches.’ Which puts us squarely in a very problematic position of having to implement radical change in our tele- lived lives or else continue to support large portions of this global system.

If you want to stop mining, then you have to stop telecommunications. You have to go back to an industrial base before rare earths and coltan were discovered and rendered fit for use. (1800 were the first discoveries, but little use came before the beginning of the 20th Century).

Otherwise, this process will simply continue and expand, along with demand, and along with all the horrific effects that the human struggle for control of resources entails everywhere…

hmmm. god that sounds bleak. sorry, but from this materialist approach to global problems, there are no solutions. It would seem that a Buddhist approach which posits that *all is change* and to try to grasp and manipulate or put off change is a futile process. We must simply move through this incarnation and while treating each other as best as we can, not get caught up in the grasping at illusion…

I don’t know. (I type on my laptop and stare at the letters string themselves across the screen…)

Ei Niina — this is all I could manage, it’s impromptu, but honest, with a bit of humor mixed in… a little complicated, as there’s no time to write an essay about what world-view lies behind the answers. You might want to reference http://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/pixel.html an article I wrote for Pixelache in Helsinki in 2007 — the same year I did a workshop there too http://www.neoscenes.net/projects/pixel/index.php

you could also check out:

http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ and search on
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/?s=network
or so…
even
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/date/2001/11

My practice has widened intensively to take on a tough challenge of the entire techno-social system we are embedded within, are part of. Yes, this includes my relationship AND my understanding of the relationship between all flows that are the substance of technology. This also includes all aspects of life governed by techno-social protocol. When I use (a) technology I understand what I will both lose and gain when using that particular protocol. Using a technology is in fact, a changing of flows of energy that we are embedded in, part of. We are not separate in any way from everything else!

Problematic word, artist. But words are only poor representations of states of relation with the Other. I have moved through numerous label systems, engineering, science, geophysics, extractives industry, traveler, teacher, facilitator, friend, foreigner, native, chariot-racer, driver, passenger, and occasionally, mixed in a constantly-changing soup, artist, watcher-of-the-sky, swimmer, etc, etc…

I don’t beg. I accept housing, a place to sleep, food (especially when I get to learn something in the kitchen or even do the cooking myself, I make some excellent Buffalo Marinara Sauce); I advise people on a variety of areas of my expertise — the optimized use of technology, as well as How Things Work, to return more control to their immediate locale and other. I talk to younger people who are participating in social ‘education’ processes, where I help them to understand its protocols, and how to perform more open protocols as participants in the entire system.

from them I learn what it is to be human.

Occasionally, money intersects my social existence. Not much , but enough — I’m still (as of this second) alive, so, enough cash, apparently.

Language is a technology, or the basic protocol that drives technology, there is no such ‘new technology’ and there is no engagement within the continuum of human relation which is not fully formed by the flows that techno-social systems impress on everyOne. A wide-energy exchange between the Self and the Other follows pathways that are affected by the entire techno-social system. That system has change its ability attract our life-time in ever more effective ways, to be sure. But once one understands that process, it is possible to precisely decide which flows to partake in and which flows to avoid or simply pay no attention to.

Field, like the label of ‘artist,’ is a set of protocols ‘recognized’ by certain people who then put their faith into those protocols and generalize what they mean. I will talk with anyone. And listen carefully to what they say. Each of them are on different paths, though, incrementally, and the labels are simply of no interest to me, except maybe in the instance that people are forced to make labels for themselves. That can be quite revealing…! Sometime I find it difficult to understand why some can’t see the obvious, but I do know that the obvious is deeply relative. I think a good understanding of thermodynamics would improve people’s abilities to make good decisions about their lives.

Networking is engaging two or three, maybe more people in a shared and open flow of energy. But since we are all engaged this way, with those people who we share our presence with, we are networking. Perhaps in Indra’s Net or some such relative world…

I think I engage people more intensively now than I did some years ago, at the same time, I stand further back, out of the ‘market’ and rather like to spend time in the desert, walking, and watching, just hanging out. I find I have plenty of good stories to tell when I am back as an urban being — teaching, or just living (with people). I like to know about peoples lives in the broadest sense, I like to interact with their families when possible. I (mostly) find it a pleasure to share presence with people. Especially when that presence is expansive, without limit, and open.

I know about Human Rights, and the myriad ways which nation-states and other techno-social powers (de)form those. But I also am aware of Human Obligations which people should pay more attention to — the grasping of Rights replaced by the practice of filling obligations with the immediate (or remote!) Other.

Again, ‘new technologies’ has a completely relative meaning, at best. It’s all about finding a particular pathway with which to share presence between the Self and the Other. Where no possible shared pathway exists, there is a sad life, eh? How close to death is a lack of human connection! I believe Martin Buber has a good model for the world — it is the intersection of the Self with the Other is the source of all reality and life. There is an infinite range of pathways to choose, each with its unique possibilities and each with a certain loss. We can never fully express our own experience to an Other, no matter the pathway. It is in being open to receive expressions outside our own experience where we come to face the unknown and to learn from it and to change within ourselves and with that, our perceptions change, and the world changes.

I am only a participant in life, so artist-audience, ah, it seems so … quaint an idea… but it’s all just about human encounter, more or less mediated by the techno-social mediation which shunts our energies onto rigidly-defined pathways… A less defined way of exchanging energies give rise to potential “Temporary Autonomous Zones” which, dynamically, provide space for creative action. It is at the intersection of the Self with the unknown (or the Other) which becomes the space of interactive being.

How did we arrive here?

and

What does thermodynamics imply?

and

USE LESS ENERGY!

While I understand that they have to follow certain academic scripts and protocols, well, what can you do! Although a more open conversation about these things might be a bit more fun…! over some good food…

I don’t think it is echoing, except as a media construct, but, really, it’s at least a bit offensive to characterize a whole country as full of fat sleeping slobs, although there are those who are precisely that here (and elsewhere in the corpulent world vs the thin world). There are conscious people here now and in the past. There have been multi-million-person marches in the streets, police rounding up tens of thousands of protesters in JFK Memorial Stadium in Washington, tear gas, shootings, bombings, and so on. While, yes, many in the present population are anesthetized by over-consumption and economic ruin, there remain those who will march and confront the despots in power. It may not be so long before you witness a scale of internecine violence in the US that makes satrap rulers and their suppression of impoverished populations look like a walk in the park. I’d explore the history of this Empire if I were you (or simply reference Tacitus’ “Annals of Imperial Rome” for a start.) This present Empire is fraught with any and all of the possible irruptions known to any comparably-scaled nation-state unit. It was only three generations ago that three percent of the population died in a major internecine war.

Empire does not mimic the provinces, it corrodes from the center out…

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

This volume Migrating:Art:Academies: represents yet another step on the (linguistic) migration from nation to nation, academy to academy, culture to culture, friend to friend, order to order, life through life. As with the first volume, Migrating Realities, any impossible contortions of English are this editor’s responsibility, and given the time constraints for this latest MigAA tome, there are sure to be some short-comings. But then, of all the movements within the social, language migrates the most of all. It is never static. Nor should it be, especially as it accompanies the learning process — a process which is essentially about encountering and naming that which is not (yet) known.

And so, now, one road comes to an end. The RV runs out of gas, the engine shudders to a halt. Or the asphalt gives way to gravel which peters out to a dead end, no further hydrocarbon-fired advance possible. You open the door, leaving behind the glass encased virtual reality of the drivers compartment. You set your foot down on the rough ground. You look around, feeling the hot wind on your face, the dust making you eyes tear up. You pick a direction. That ridge over there, the view should be good. You set out. Watching the ground, the terrain, the prickly pear, the manzanita, the saguaro, the cholla, noting potential sources of danger, listen for the tell-tale spine-shivering sound of the rattle snake. Each foot is placed with exaggerated care. You keep walking until exhaustion creeps into your joints and you lay down in the undisturbed soil. Everything looks different from here. You have changed you point of view through the motion that the body has provided over the years. You are different. The path you have forged and the pathways that you have followed have changed you. You have evolved. And now, you come to the end of the road. You have extended you life-energy as far as it goes. You close your eyes to the over-arching sky, breathing the smell of rain-touched sage and desert sand. And gradually you fall asleep to the smooth warmth of an up-slope southern wind. You are a transitory nomad on the face of the planet. But this is your home: eyes to the stars and sky, back to the earth, sinking into dreams of the stillness of constant motion and what wonders will be uncovered in the next revolution. In the dream there are no defined pathways on which to travel, all directions are possible, creativity exists everywhere, all the time, there is only the present, the now.

sotto voce: Strategic positioning relates to local, regional and global power flows and offensive/defensive weapon systems (among other factors). The US military left Iceland because it no longer represented a strategic advantage to be there (precisely because of weapon systems like submarine-launched ICBM’s, not to mention the very real shifts of global power that have come about since the Cold War ended). During WWII, because of the limits on aircraft range, Iceland was crucial to the Allied (US-supported) efforts in Europe. But gradually, again, with changing weapon systems and different constellations of global power, Iceland is no longer ‘strategic.’ Might be hard for some folks to swallow, pride-wise, not being ‘important’ in some global scheme, but that’s the way things go — they change. Iceland has few if any unique marketable/strategic resources as measured in the present world order. And on the other hand, they have liabilities according to globalist interests (for example, a quaint nationalism which is completely redundant in global market systems, no longer strategic travel/transport location (no need for Keflavík re-fueling!), no significant energy resources that are fiscally develop-able to the scale necessary for global competition, an education system that includes 100% literacy but is, on its own, entrenched and lacking innovative threads (and reinforcing the same naivete that gave rise to the recent disastrous foray into the global market system) … and so on…

sotto voce: Presumably, though, the powers of the office of the president are circumscribed in the constitution, and, as such, are available to the person occupying the office. As happened in the US during the Bush regime, massive powers not explicitly outlined in the constitution were gathered by that regime, strengthening the office of president dramatically (powers that Obama has not relinquished at all — those at the top love extra power)… Any government or national political power structure goes through fluid shifts in concentration & location of power almost constantly, but some more precipitous than others. I’d suggest a close reading of The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus, for a good outline on shifting power structures in a nation-state.

drift arises from an ordered archive of ambient phonographic fragments recorded over the past twenty years or so. From this archive improvisational works are assembled: indeterminate and reductive modulations that critically sample the flow of embodied be-ing. Known objects and discrete events populate our world only because we are social animals who have learned the dominant protocols of the techno-social system that we inhabit. This condition is especially onerous with the protocols circumscribing the failed (object-oriented) materialist worldview. drift consciously moves algorithmically with-in and with-out of recognizable protocols, acknowledging that without these memory-impressed protocols, all immediate experience becomes an incomprehensible flow. However, the cosmos we participate in, and indeed, are part of, is composed of these flows and comprehension is an illusion. What we know is only the temporal persistence of patterns in our embodied consciousness which resonate with an attenuated selection of those flows. drift simulates the full signal width of the flows, recognizable or not, and simply transits the field which is the present.

reflections on neoscenes :: drift

drift is an approach to the task of comprehending the flow of life around and through the energized body. In particular, sonic energy flows may be used as an indication of the order of the localized universe. In some worldviews, all points in a energy field are thought to contain the full (yet indeterminate) information set necessary to reconstruct the entire implicate order of the universe.

or

drift arises in habitually restless nomadic sampling of sonic energies.

drift depends on a somewhat fluid, though discontinuous, processing of those mediated samples.

drift retrospectively charts a pathway taken.

drift follows that pathway as defined by the energy constraints of that path.

drift reflects the trace of an indeterminate trajectory.

drift moves through numerically limited post-Cartesian dimensions and through several discrete parallel universes.

drift should be of infinite length to adequately circumscribe the unknowable Void.

drift demands an assumption of relativity and provides quantized realism.

drift is a simulation of energized be-ing.

drift is made available by the relentless domination of the machinic over the humane.

drift is a simulation of apprehending the storehouses of knowledge that culture tend to build: a consuming of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

drift is be-ing lost.

or

Energized expressions that are the essence of life arise when beings-of-energy frame and re-direct small samples of the impressing flows that they are immersed within. This sixty minute piece is a spontaneous low-resolution sonographic drift approximating the extent of the universe.

or

Depending on your frame of reference — concatenated with the dynamic range of your point-of-view — you may resonate as you follow this drift, or you may not. And, as you go, it is good to recall that the simulation is not the thing itself: the map is not the territory.

Grand Prize for this year, the online platform VisitorsStudio, is not a complete newcomer to the netart scene — it’s been running as a live visual-sonic collaboratory for a few years now. As a playground, it offers many degrees of freedom within what appears at first to be a restrictive environment. But, isn’t it true that all play-places have limits? Your mother would never let you go off just anywhere and play. She would certainly approve of VisitorsStudio. The limits of VisitorsStudio lie primarily in the intriguing area of file sizes (more on that shortly). The interface is intuitive and straight forward, and without a steep learning curve, anyone can create mesmerizing works in no time.

The most obvious elements of digital mash-up play are the text, the image (still and moving), and the sound. Participants in VisitorsStudio may gather these elements themselves and using a rich set of live controls make compelling live mixes. There is an existing database of files to work with, or, you can prepare your own media library to upload and play with. This is where each sound, image, or video file is limited to a 200kb maximum size — you will be surprised at what can be done — the result is absolute proof that great things come in small packages.

VisitorsStudio is available for special performances and makes an ideal platform for educators in all settings who wish to stimulate imaginations with real interactive digital art — its not simulated and its not eye-candy. As a collaborative tool, it does not aggressively take the foreground in the process, but rather works as a solid and supportive background element for seamless play.

Of course, the best way to enjoy a jam session is with a heavy-duty sound system and a 72-inch plasma screen or a video projector. You will be the resident visual-sonic artist. But intimate small-screen solo play is also very satisfying. The best feature is the possibility for live remote partners and audience. Invite your friends half-way around the world to join you in a jam session!

Technically, VisitorsStudio needs only an internet connection and a browser running the latest version of the Flash plugin. And, hey, if we ask, maybe they will port a Wii controller to VisitorsStudio! Wouldn’t that be fun? Let’s play!

One of the Honorable Mentions for the 2009 netart award is SiTO’s gridcosm project which, if there ever was a primordial interactive play-place online, this is it. Gridcosm was initiated by Ed Stasny way back in 1997 as an outgrowth of SiTO’s live online image mash-up collaborations. That’s in the PreCambrian era of internet time! It even has its own Wikipedia entry! But gridcosm clearly tapped into something fundamental — with a fresh and accessible interface design; solid back-end code; and exuding a rare social sensibility of precisely what it means to collaborate online — there are hundreds of contributors. A dozen years later, the collaborative space is continuously full with a vibrant and evolving palette of personalities and plenty evidence of creative juice spilling out onto the screen. The acronym SiTO originally came from OTIS (Operational Term is Stimulate) which was the motto of the nascent online collective collaboratory back in 1994 or so. So, kudos to gridcosm for sheer staying power and what looks to be a lively future. How many layers does an artwork need to have for it to be classified as cosmologically significant? Visit gridcosm and discover the answer to this profound question! It’s an open project for anyone to jump into — as are all the SiTO collaborative projects — so, check it out!

John Hopkins, Sydney, Australia, 15.Nov.2009

sotto voce: Standardization is inexorable as long as the Techno-social system has the energy input to expend on maintaining and propagating ordered sub-systems.

That energy input is, at base, the attention paid to it by the individuals who populate its institutional sub-systems.

When the Techno-social system runs out of energy input, it will gradually gain in disorder and degrees of autonomous freedom.

Learning takes place everywhere all the time. It is a mistake that you expect a state institution, an integral part of the Techno-social system to be a free and open system. It’s best to pay it NO attention and instead take your education fully into your own hands. Take your attention and give it fully to your peers, and you will learn everything you need to know. And at the same time, you will see the Techno-social system weaken as it loses your energy/attention input…

Leaning on/into the State in opposition only strengthens the reified/reifying bulwarks of State.

Walk away on a new self-determinate path and the State falls flat, a crumbled edifice of artifice.

Liquidity and Flow (rather than Solidarity) from Sydney, where the #2 source of GNP to Australia is Corporate/International Education — it’s right behind #1 which is the Extractives/Mining Industries.

Not much difference between the two, somehow. One extracts concentrated energy from the earth, the other extracts concentrated energy from the attention and lives of young people.

I’d say this dialectic is a cultural construct relating to the West’s inability to philosophically cope with the constancy of change in the universe. So many arbitrary scalar frameworks (and labels, names, abstracted linguistic tags) are put onto (material) stuff to give us a(n artificial) sense of stability. Art in institutional white boxes (whose very institutional-ness is critical to the fostering of that sense of stability); stone sculptures in public spaces; art market metrics. The very object-ness with which we frame the discussion here is embedded in the language of Newtonian fixity and precision of tracking the trajectories of Things. Along with the categorization process which allows a ‘safe’ social shorthand for circumscribing those things (which, in other world views are merely phenomenal events or flows of potential energy), a circumscribing of which has as primary intent the rendering as safe that phenomenal event to a nervous bystander who wants to believe in the monumental fixity of his/her social system.

sotto voce: another short point (belch) I would risk making — I think there is a real danger in this stage of Empire to focus on personalities rather than structural relations of power. That is, the “Office of the Presidency” has changed greatly during the Bush regime, mostly not as a result of Bush himself but because a convergence of forces (okay, Cheney, Rove, embody the forces perhaps.. etc etc) — a convergence of forces that are structurally evolving at this moment in the Empire. Of course, those concentrations of power may simply wane during the Obama regime, or, more likely in my mind, is that they will increase, given the intense desires and energies and attentions projected at (the) Presidency. Given Obama’s awareness of media, this will be a ‘natural.’ But this evolution, whatever happens, will not be THAT closely tied to Obama, IMHO, but simply the trajectory of Empire… I am hopeful for a kinder and more intelligent Empire, but what else is a kinder Empire than one which is on the way down, unable to brutally control the sources of it’s power; add intelligence to kindness, and is that akin to beautifully playing the fiddle while Rome burns? Or simply more intricate and obscured warfare on less suspecting victims? Watch for some interesting machinations of power in the next 4 years… I have decided, personally, that I will have lived during the (first) peak and subsequent decline of the (first) American Empire. All’s to do is to document that life and find some humor among humans.

doh…!

This year’s netart award was very difficult to close in on. The absolute volume and traffic of data on the network does not seem to be correlated to its ultimate creative vitality. Can it be that the net has reached the saturation point as a means to realize the creative potential of its creators: that the signal-to-noise ratio has reached an asymptotic limit? Or is it merely an approach to the saturation point of the haplessly consuming audience? Is the net only a flooded communications platform in service of global capitalism? There is perhaps no particular reason to be overly cynical, although for this tech-no-madic curator the life-changes that accompany each further implementation of technologically-mediated connection seem to lose their appeal more and more quickly. For a creative, though, the question remains — how to be evolutionary when taking on the next tool presented by the Venture Techno-capitalists. Where to find something that avoids the clichés of, for example, the ubiquitously pop Web 2.0? There are the occasionally surprising implementations of the 2.0 paradigm, but they are often revealed as the tired exercises in the viral marketing of venture capital dreams. What inspiring sources are out there in the net? Are there any? Perhaps, but only if we leave the material behind to search of the ghost in the machine.

Where is the immaterial, the trace or evidence of the metaphysical, where is it hidden in the technological network of things? Is it actually hidden at all? Or is it simply not there? Has technology, in the form of global networks, banished those inexplicable essences from itself? Technology does have its obvious formative materialized essence, as it is another thing that presents itself to us in our limited sensibilities. But in the dislocated network, far from our touch, what is the apprehended essence, that attractor that keeps us intently focused on the screen. An attractor so compelling and full of gravitas that we chose to limit any change in our point-of-view and remain instead in a motionless screen-bent gaze, in a stationary orbit?

What draws us with this gravity, what draws us into its field of action? We are fascinated by the Light, sure, but our attention is bound by the gravity. The attractor of the machine lies within itself, not within us. We orbit the gravitational center of our own creation, the dense hubris of code. Without code there is only the material gap into which falls our embodied being, levity left to airs and vapors, (hydro)carbon (a)(e)ffluence and other oxidation-reduction reactions.

The grand prize goes to a work that is elegantly inexplicable, conch by the Japanese designer Ｙoshiyuki Katayama. Four topical and simple interactive works explore code as a means to transform time and space into essential visual essences. We may easily orbit the code while watching its realization. And time passes. Such is life.

The runners-up all seem to find simple interactions between code and presentation, leaving some viewers to perhaps simply shrug and move on. Somehow I like to think that these projects represent a search for the network coding of the koan — the Buddhist meditative tool — where the code is an essential step on the path to enLightenment.

Cloud of Clouds by Miguel Leal and Luís Sarmento keeps the sky open for interpretation as it should be, while Ethan Ham’s work, Self Portrait, leaves the self open for interpretation. And, to disagree with the Internet, as does the Disagreeing Internet well, that leaves our orbit around the gravitas of code very much open for not only interpretation but for fundamental questioning and even outright rejection. No more passive agreement with those Venture Capitalists!

Perhaps, when the last flicker comes from the last flat screen, we will understand that code is a chant to exorcise the machine, leaving the ghost (and us!) free to move on to something else. We shall see.

John Hopkins, Prescott, Arizona, USA, 04.Nov.2008

This speculative essay addresses the process of amplification which expresses itself at a wide range of scales and affects and which models a fundamental aspect of all human presence. It opens with a brief description of a prototypical amplifier, then frames life as the coherent self-organizing expression of energy embedded in a universal field of energy flows. It examines simple biological models of amplification and suggests possible reasons for amplification processes to exist. Narrowing its focus, it looks first at the human species, then the body, and then the collective social system as an operative field of amplification. It subsequently explores the Regime of Amplification as a general manifestation of the prototypical TSS (techno-social system) — a system whose goal is to maintain the viability of localized sub-sets of the species in the face of competition as well as continuous and universal change. Two specific examples — the radio and the military — are presented to simply illustrate the principles suggested. The conclusion reiterates the affects of techno-social amplification on individual be-ing as well as on the entire continuum of relation that the individual is a part of. It suggests some fundamental pathways of action which have an immediate detrimental affect on the hierarchic flows of the Regime.

sotto voce: Speaking as someone who first majored in mining engineering and ended up in geophysical engineering for a major oil company… (my profuse apologies in retrospect :-\\

I am very doubtful that “new” technologies will solve the problem — as what would be termed higher technologies require more intensive usage of the pre-existing techno-social system or infrastructure to develop those technologies. Things like nano-technologies, because of the consequent need for greater precision and so on, require that much more energy to maintain highly precise infrastructures. Not to mention another couple layers of machines (made by machines made by machines) all which ultimately sit on the extractive minerals industry. The greater the order/precision/complexity of a system the more inflow of energy you need to maintain that order. This is simple thermodynamics. The only way you can deal with this problem is to look for incrementally system-wise LESS complex solutions. This is the key weakness of forward-looking Utopian technological-development horizons. If it requires a greater degree of complexity, it will have a consequently larger foot-print related to primary industrial processes like mining, refining, and extraction..

And, the consequent human price is paid — as we drain energy resources OUT of a social system — it is thermodynamically no surprise there are larger degrees of social disorder in those systems (Nigeria, Middle East, Brazil, Appalachia, the Rheingebiet — actually EVERYWHERE that these extractive processes take place!)

I’m starting to have the belief that we will simply go through a peak of consumptive civilization and as energy sources are depleted, the global techno-social system will not be able to maintain the globe-spanning order (try driving tanks on vegetable oil…) it has now, things will become more local.

Imagine that it could very well be that in our life times, that the prospect of one of us visiting from Europe to Brazil will be as difficult and time-consuming as it was 200 years ago… or more! (200 years ago, there were still some trees in the world large enough to construct robust ocean-going vessels)…

Okay, so what to do in the mean time? I believe lowering complexity in our lives by avoiding higher-technologies when we have a choice — in eating, working, living, playing — complexity generated by participating in distant extensions in the food cycle, the communications cycle, any technology cycles, by higher precision devices and systems, by globally standardized systems of all sorts…

should I give up email and talk to my neighbors instead? yes, most likely… at least that way, if war breaks out, I will at least know something about my neighbor…

sotto voce (posted to brainstorms on back-channel communication and surfing in the wired classroom): I think one of the elephants in the room is the question of relevance. By this I mean — yes, the network provides channels to access information about the apparent subject of the learning experience. But what about the learning approach where a group simply maps their own understanding of a ‘knowledge’ space, and extends that space with their OWN ideas, relevant to their situation, rather than the constant referencing to what is becoming the standard (knowledge) ‘out there’ in the (socially-defined, dominantly-positioned) network. I believe this loss of autonomy of the local group of learners will have DEEP repercussions in the future. Indeed, it represents a loss of idiosyncrasy and autonomy of the learning process AND a deep dislocation of local relevance. It also represents a deep loss of diversity in the dominant social system. (a deep gain in conformity!) This might explain how students are finding ‘public’ education as a real learning situation ever more irrelevant and in need of being avoided or dis-engaged from at all costs.

People will pay attention to information relevant to their situation.

sotto voce: A metric is a standard, and a standard is the fundamental building-block of a (our) techno-social system. We cannot have a techno-social system without standards, so the question becomes how many, how expansive, and how standard? Whenever standards are applied to a system, the system decreases in its degree of freedom and complexity, and increases internal control-ability for the duration of the time that the system has those standards applied (which is for how long that system has the excess energy to maintain the order that is required to apply standards).

If we seek for a ‘global’ standard when we have only, say, a national standard, our system will be poorer in its potential for creative innovation, period. As standards are applied on larger and larger systems (thinking of the development of global standards (for example, telephone plugs)) idiosyncrasy decreases and the opportunities within which we encounter the un-expected decreases (oh, as techno-road-warrior I can plug my modem in where-ever I travel, that’s cool — to maintain my position in the techno-social system I need this ability!). When (fewer) standards of a more local sense are applied, there are more opportunities for interstitial (TAZ’s) to arise simply because there are more interstitial gaps between standardized systems.

I vote for less standards, more idiosyncrasy.

Even if it means I am completely excluded from a standardized system of educational production, thank you… I will somewhat happily forgo the rewards that go along with standardization to maintain an autonomous situation for myself (and the students I encounter). Standards are about conformity, social harmony, control, power, and ultimately about stasis and death. A system with a too-high degree of standardization cannot innovate or deal with change. And, if all is change, well, that is something to deal with. (for example, the long-term effect of the Bologna Accord will be wider-scale reification of the educational system in Europe, no doubt!)

Now I realize the discussion here is proceeding based on the idea that we face a previously reified and unresponsive system of standards imposed by a techno-social system that was responding to other degrees of uncertainty that it felt were unbearable (to social stability). But I think it is problematic to think that another set of standards will function any differently. Truly open systems suggest a lack of standards which then stimulates the direct negotiation and exchange process at the granular human level — this process of exchange arises from difference itself.

sotto voce: The cost you pay is directly correlated to the depth of your embeddedness, your degree of participation in the techno-social system. For example, to simply ‘own’ a laptop, I calculated over the past 15 years I spend around USD 120 / month. This does not include cost of upgrades and peripherals, telecom, electrical, or other costs. This is only having the machine sitting on my lap. Of course, to participate in the techno-social system that ‘allows’ me to make a posting to this list, or to receive incoming postings, requires much more than that single expense. There are ways of minimizing or reducing the relative level of participation, but in a developed country, there are absolute minimums which, if I slide under, I remove myself from any ability to participate. Things like a fixed address, a bank account, a national ID number, a passport — each of which demands a certain set of other fixity/stability in regard to the system (which demands this to support its continued viability).

I ‘pay’ for the privilege primarily by spending some of my life-time in the service of propping up that techno-social system. Spending life-time in participating in system-sanctioned interaction with others who are also seeking legitimacy within the system. When I spend that life-time, it’s gone, I don’t get it back. I convert some of that resource, life-time, life-energy into an abstracted currency which allows me the ‘freedom’ to convert my life-energy into other sanctioned expressions of the techno-social system for my perusal and consumption. Through participating I lend my life-energy as a signature of legitimacy of the entire techno-social system that I am helping to prop up as a participant. What a system ‘sanctions’ is not always clear, but in the long-term, it is anything that promotes my participation in the system in such a way that the system profits in using my submitted energies in expressions that it deems necessary to its survival (not mine!)…

The ultimate payee in any social system are the individuals who participate in the system, at whatever level — through the spending of life-time (think, for example, ‘paying attention’) into that system. There are relative ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ depending on how you judge the relative punishments and rewards meted out by the system as it seeks your optimal participation.

I think that refusing participation at the degree of whether or not to publish based on an ideological detail within the system is a very small incremental shift in paying slightly attention to the ‘dominant’ system and slightly more to a subset of that dominant system. I use the word subset because the dominant system includes the entire globalized techno-social infrastructure of telecommunications and digital devices upon which in both cases we are totally dependent.

In order to participate in this forum here (as one possible niche, TAZ, where we can play for a time, before going back to paying attention to the dominant system …) or to write about these subjects or to circulate at all, we are dependent. I can understand the refusal as a statement against the hegemonic power of that system, and BRAVO for that. But what about a refusal to use tele-communications and instead only transmit orally the ideas to one person at a time. (Yeah, why not — what is it about numbers and spatial reach that so seduces us to believe in our own ‘influence’ on others..?) Imagine that, if everyone on every mailing list in the world would instead take the same amount of time they spend in eye-lid-locked paralyzed point-of-view gazing at the screen and instead engaged with those humans which were immediately around them…

some musings…

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.

Creative activities at the confluence of art and communication (science and technology) have an increasingly important role in cultural and social dynamics. The territory mapped by these activities, especially their impact on evolving social structures and networked systems, is an area of rich possibility and chaotic flows. As an artist, it is my interest to occupy the dynamic field of that intersection and, while exploring its fundamental characteristics, develop a deeper awareness of the process of human connection, exchange, and be-ing. Presence, as it may be variously manifest through mediation, is my primary “material,” and “genuine dialogue,” as Martin Buber expressed it, is my primary method. My research often explores the spontaneous unscripted abilities of the self to concentrate and focus energies and establish dialectic connection across more than just material gaps. In a space of indeterminate momentary outcomes, creativity finds a fundamental source.

The formation of material artifacts is for me an inspired activity and a specifically directed flow of energy in support of creative activities. However, I subscribe to a post-materialist worldview which transcends the mechanistic and Cartesian linkages between object and subject and instead looks at the energy content and configuration of a ‘work.’ One current area of exploration of this energy is the creation and constellation of ordered systems — archives or dataspaces — which I subsequently employ as sources in performative events and situations. These situations sometime incorporate artifacts, sometime rely solely on the momentary ambient environmental conditions, sometime cull the ordered space of archive; they all seek to establish a flow of the spontaneous and improbable. While I regard the material art-making process an important aspect of being — an aspect that allows for significant concentrations of personal energy and expression — I do like to approach it as an open-ended element of a wider practice where there is no defined ending point and change is the guiding principle.

As an artist, I am committed to the dynamics of the learning environment as a critical and important facet of my work. Teaching is a special case of the more general open situations referred to previously. I seek to create vital learning spaces — conceptual and physical zones where the exercise of free expression and spontaneous dialogue takes place — an environment that is both practical and experimental, realistic and fantastic, personally relevant and socially sensitized. I frequently build on my own explorations as an artist — using my personal creative experience as a referent and bringing my current creative energies and directions directly into the learning process. Personal rapport, dialogue, and humane contact are important factors in my conduct as an arts educator.

With the goal of defining fundamental conditions for personal and social evolution, my workshops are based in critical and dynamic dialogue over a wide variety of issues and concepts. I am against drawing arbitrary divisions between various concepts, cultures, disciplines, creative sources, and mediums of expression, but rather focus on weaving different ideological, conceptual, and especially personal energies into creative juxtaposition. The synergy of disparate trans-disciplinary energies and ideas through active communication and creative collaboration is a necessary element of inspired and relevant learning. Two specific roles that I take on is that of facilitator — to encourage open-ness — and information-source — to pass on to participants significant threads that I receive from my own substantial international network of collaborative connections working across the spectrum of art and technology.

I teach my students to accept and trust their own sensory experience in the world. In this process, they gain an inexhaustible energy source and free up their creative possibilities. I accomplish this by facilitating a trusting environment and stimulating connected collaboration. At any point in the dialogue between myself and the student, I would seek to engage at a level that is beyond institutionalized formality. My significant experience in second-language and cross-cultural situations provides my teaching activities with a certain independence from ideology-based systems and protocols. This makes the learning more transparent, participative, flexible, and spontaneous.

Any emphasis on language-based (and thus abstracted) theory needs to be balanced by intimate, practical, and principled exploration of the (materialized) actions of creativity to establish a lived practice. A student needs to be able to construct a finite methodology for approaching a new medium or idea — how to test the limits of a medium, how to stimulate experimentation without stifling spontaneous creation, how to build up discipline, concentration, and attention when working, and how to see critically and creatively while in vital interaction with the noumenal world and, finally, how to package their own human energies within carriers most appropriate to their expressive needs. Ways of working may and should be informed by theoretical understandings, historical precedent, critical viewpoints, but, most importantly, the establishment of this centered life-practice. It is extremely important that the student experience and identify specific life-long sources of energy where they might root their creative impulses. The creative oscillation between word and action must always be linked; and both, considered and used in concert, become an inexhaustible energy source and basis of a powerful practice.

As the writings of Paolo Friere discuss in detail, the teacher-student relationship should be characterized by a dynamic and balanced dialectic. Teaching is a truly human activity. Teacher and student are both the educators and the educated — learning is sharing. The measure of a successful learning experience may be drawn from how the shared wisdom comes into being in the life-practice of both the student and the teacher.

Outside the classroom, I am always interested in working with other artists and educators in creating new learning situations both on- and off-line, especially those that explore the rich textures of inter-disciplinary awareness. Being supportive of and supported by the academic community is crucial to the survival and growth of diversity. I am interested in dialogue and active consideration of the principle issues of higher education and am especially interested in the creation of projects and programs with international participation.