Establish (via dancing around) the fundamentals of the cosmos; establish (by chanting a framework for apprehending those fundamentals) what individual presence seems to be; establish (by tracing lived experience) what the dynamic of interactions of human engagement are; situate (humanely) those encounters in the wider social system (or continuum of relation); examine the impact/role of technology on/in all of this; frame a creative praxis that might transcend the limits of those impacts while taking into account an energized world view, and, indeed, lessen those impacts in a sustainable way; open an empowered pathway to decode what is happening along this moment in history. These are the primary goals of the work.

Title

Sonic Presence Within The Networked Regime of Amplification

This research explores the relationship of (sonic)energy to social be-ing, technology, and the consequent possibilities for creative action.

Subject

Sound is energy, sound carries energy. Sonic energy is a product and a by-product of life. It forms one expression of organismic presence. It is one particular energized expression of our band-limited life that developed its particular characteristics through evolutionary processes. These processes are essentially structured around variations in the (spatial and temporal) concentrations and availabilities of energy. As one such expression, sound is employed as one means through which humans enhance their survivability. Amplification represents a particular model for what is essentially a life-process that operates on various energy flows, modulating their basic characteristics. How human collectives generate and interact with sonic energy governs a wide swath of their consequent techno-social interactions. This research is a distributed exploration of sound as a carrier of energy between the Self and the Other — as it is mediated through the globe-spanning network of techno-social amplification systems. Specifically, it will be a critical exploration of our contemporary techno-social terrain through the application of this model in a variety of creatively energized situations.

Outcomes

Formally, outcomes will include the dissertation, live/online performances, workshops, a blog, festival participation, and conference presentations. Through developing an energy-based model that amplification provides an armature for, it is my hope that this research will generate a powerful tool for analyzing and understanding the dynamic affects of technological systems on creative human engagement at all scales. This knowledge will be applied to facilitate actual situations for this engagement to be explored.

Keywords

amplification, sound, (sonic) energy, power, technology, techno-social systems, networks, continuum of relation, dialogue, collaboration, presence, sustainable creativity, social action, entropy, thermodynamics …

Background for Research

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

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

Our total sensual world is in part comprised of this dynamic and complex social system — an emergent system that embodies the expansion of the human population and the intensification of the global technological infrastructure. This contemporary social milieu may be described as a techno-social system which, among other affects it exhibits, more or less precisely prescribes the pathways of interaction between participating humans. This system may be modeled as a complex and multi-layered conflation of energized flows or signals which compete for both our attention as well as for the sources of energy which ultimately drive their expression. Sonic energy, given our evolutionary attributes, is a critical form for our energized presence and participation. The techno-social system that we have collectively constructed generates a tremendous variety of devices which impinge sonically on our lives and claim to offer practically everything including reproductive/evolutionary dominance and psycho-spiritual transcendence. But what of these devices, how do they form us and our relation with the world? How do they form the paths of impression and expression through which we establish and maintain our communities and our Selves? How do they arise within the techno-social system? How are our lives intertwined and affected by these pathways? How may we create sustainable systems of energy movement that augment the possibilities of human connection?

Amplification, as a fundamental process applied to different forms of energy, presents a model that is applicable across a tremendous range of systems from the basic biological to the complex technical. Amplification presumes the alteration of existing systems of energy movement from an ambient state to an altered one. This process of alteration has the effect of changing fundamental relationships of power within the entire localized (and distributed!) techno-social system through a process of energy density redistribution. All amplification systems rely on the existence of an energy source by which they accomplish their signal enhancement, and thus, their affects relate deeply to the contingencies of those sources among other factors. Amplification also introduces spurious flows of ‘waste’ energy into the situation. These flows often have destructive affects.

Amplification systems includes the entire range of electricity-based telepresence devices which are becoming ever more ubiquitous in our techno-social system. As a direct consequence, this system becomes more dependent on the structural and operational necessities that amplification requires. It is these requirements which apply deep formative forces on participants in the system as well as the system itself. When we use these devices, we are participating in a complex system that is characterized by fundamental and wholesale re-directions of energy. This re-direction is not a passive process nor does it affect trivial changes in the wider system. It forms an embedded matrix of alteration in the continuum of human relations — between individuals, collectives, and between human social systems and ‘natural’ systems. It affects all the fundamentals of human presence including those of place, memory, and be-ing.

A primary focus of this research is to extend and situate this model of amplification within the widest context, especially examining the effects of applied and ambient amplification on sustainable and creative cultural systems. As I note following in a basic outline of possible sources, this requires a wide exploration of whole fields of research (as the bibliography also indicates).

Specifically, though, I will explore the effects of amplification on creative action both from the point-of-view of the user as well as the entire system that the user is embedded within. For example, distributed creative action, as promoted by the availability of network systems such as “Web 2.0,” are completely dependent on complex systems of directed amplification. How do these dependencies affect the distributed creative processes taking place within? How do human networks interact with the formations of power and energy which are applied by amplification systems? How do the systems of amplification re-arrange relations of power in the social and the ‘natural’ system?

Personal Research Background

My own applied international research in distributed performance and tactical media over the last fifteen years centers around synchronous live network-based social activities. Engaging a wide range of technical solutions, my work is a direct utilization of digital networks as the locus for creative presence and action. As access to bandwidth has gradually increased, opportunities for collaborative performance utilizing digital networks as the primary form mediation have expanded greatly while changing character significantly. These areas of research experience include a variety of performance-based activities in theater, music, and other expressive arts in collaborative networked situations. As a self-proclaimed networker, an area of core awareness in my research is the concept of presence. Human presence is directly and indirectly affected by the digital network technologies that amplify and attenuate presence. I have a wide and deep experience base in expressing human presence across networked techno-social systems while exploring how that presence is precisely formed and informed by the impression of the technologies used.

Tactical media, a term coined during the rise of network culture, includes the use of media — especially those operating through distributed network technologies — that specifically supports idiosyncratic expressions of small-scale social systems. My research and facilitation work explores the (often troubled) relationship between the large-scale deployments of standardized global network technologies and the need for local expression. The question arises: is it possible to utilize one of these standardized technologies without that very process of standardization flattening out idiosyncratic expression? One conclusion that I have come to is that despite even a high degree of mediation applied by a technological system, it is still possible to have a meaningful exchange if participants are aware of the actual affects and mechanisms of the mediation. This would include a good understanding of the actual movement of energy across the network system — a movement without which, human relation fails.

Relevant Literature

(please note that references here are all contained in the online bibliography located at http://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/biblio.html)

The ubiquitous use of digital devices arising from the rapid decrease in the relative cost of computing power has transformed information technology from an isolated domain for computer programming research into an integral part of a pervasive extended social research domain. And although the success of a contemporary social milieu is now often measured by the efficiency of integration of two broad distributed systems — the human (social) and the machinic (technological) — for the purposes of this proposal only, I will discuss previous research from this bifurcated point-of-view. It is important to note that there is significant cross-over and currently this particular dialectic is decidedly less productive.

In the specific topic of network theory, for example, advances spurred by research in previously unrelated fields such as genetics are creating totally new areas of research: bio-informatics. In this same light, existing research from a wide span of fields from cognitive science to consciousness studies to Quantum physics to genetics are also considered to be relevant to the production of the thesis. I will follow the technical and social sections by a few brief examples of possible research leads from other fields. As with any transdisciplinary undertaking this will be a core challenge: to be open to diverse threads of research, at the same time as not stretching too far. With this in mind, the primary hermeneutic goal is identifying fundamental principles from broad textual explorations.

Technical Research

Technical network research generally concentrates on the efficiency of power consumption, security, data transmission, software/hardware interface, and general materials constraints and usage — engineering issues of system structure and optimization.

For example, with the widespread deployment of wireless networks as communications signal amplifiers — where a majority of nodes are powered by batteries — there is great interest in techniques for optimizing fundamental energy usage and management (Papadimitriou, 2004, p.567; Kumar, 2005, p.415). Technological failure — the loss of system coherency and its subsequent inability to carry messages — is also an area of critical network research (Koroma, 2003, p. 47). In both these areas there is a direct correlation between the survivability and efficacy of network hardware systems as and the availability and efficient use of energy to construct, maintain, and operate such amplified communications system.

Research in network analysis proceeds either through sampling or capturing real network traffic (aggregate protocol and communications data) for generating metrics that determine the communicative topology and state of the network (Barabasi, 2001, p. 52), or through computer simulations of complex network systems. Simulation work subsists on the development of algorithmic solutions (often ultimately based in graph theory) which model relations between elements (objects and links) in the network occasionally combined with absolute energy optimization considerations. This range of research is characterized by projects like the Applied Network Research (ANR) Measurement and Network Analysis group (McGregor, 2001, et al). In considering the Internet as a whole, because of the sheer unregulated extent, mathematical simulations are less effective tools because they rarely capture emergent properties nor do they always reflect the actualities of such a complex system.

For example, a brief survey of commercial network diagnostic solutions shows existing metrics of which a primary one is the utilization of bandwidth. The bandwidth parameter has a direct correlation to the transmissive and receptive capabilities of a communications network (Danchak, 2001, p. 2). It is generally accepted that higher-bandwidth equates with better communications. Indeed, perceived progress in network technology is often predicated on availability of and access to greater bandwidth combined with less error-prone data transmission. Interestingly, higher-bandwidth systems (as signal amplifiers with access to more power) are also systems that have a greater amount of social capital energy invested in them, suggesting a correlation between the amount of total energy coming into a system and the level of order — where order in this case is measured by a favorable ratio of signal to noise (which can be seen as two types of energy being transferred by the system) — and where order is a direct expression of a non-equilibrium systems ability to controvert entropy.

Social Research

Social network research, also called simply network theory, is most often related to sociology, anthropology, social psychology, or organizational studies. It is generally concerned with the characteristics of emergent macro-level relationships between nodes (actors) within real or prototypical/simulated network systems.

There are, as well, areas of research such as HCI (human-computer interaction), CSCW (computer supported cooperative work), HCC (human-centered computing), that peripherally impact my research in their exploration of the ergonomic (functional-material), the semiotic (linguistic), and the broader social parameters of human interaction with others and interaction with computer-based digital systems. The process of knowledge-building, as one collective social goal of cooperative work, is an activity that has been modeled extensively and will provide input.

However, these areas of study rarely consider the combined scalar qualities of the dynamics of human relation that are mapped out between the (individual) Self and the Other — what I would call the granular level of a network. There is no general social network theory that specifically frames the nodes in a social network as the embodied Self and the Other as primary constituents. However, Alter (1999, p. 8) proposes a general theory of Information Systems in which he defines a “work system” as a “system in which human participants and/or machines perform a business process using information technology, and other resources…” Aside from the business reference, the equating of work with energy makes this an interesting approach that alludes to the fundamental relationship between energy (transfer) and granular/nodal systems comprised of interconnected humans — as they exist in the continuum of relation.

As a outgrowth of sociometry, Social Network Theory (SNT) (Barabasi, 2003, et.al.) grew out of quantitative analyses of social relation, and is currently a very active field of inquiry. Social network analysis applies algorithms from graph theory to identify both patterns and variables in the structural relationships of these networks (Wasserman, 1994, Kadushin, 2004). As with other threads of network analysis, SNT tends to weigh the collective over individual attributes, and the relation of the theory and its algorithms to the actual mediative network technology is not always explicit. It is, however, a useful direction of approach to the question of mediation and the architecture of relation which it obliquely includes.

Another approach is the social construction of technology (SCOT) which “distinguishes in its presuppositions and its metaphysical roots, between people and societies on the one hand, and the world of artifacts (and the natural world too) on the other.” (Law, 2003, p. 3) This approach provides an initial synergy, although the absolute division between things and people is a problematic relic of materialism which informs, but at some level is the anti-thesis of the model I am developing.

Actor Network Theory (ANT) is an approach of interest to “understand the mechanics of power and organization” (Law, 1992, p. 2) and because one of its base tenets is a form of scale-independent heterogeneity, a principle which is more inclusive of disparate elements (both abstract and material) and factors in modeling the dynamic of a social system. Law also posits that knowledge “always takes material forms,” and in doing this, he makes a clear connection to what we think of as the material world — though I will take this several steps further and describe the connection between material manifestations and energy relations. Although I do not see a precise application of ANT to my model, Law sees it as a means to a more holistic analysis of combined social-technological systems which are fundamentally dynamic processes, not objects — it is a promising starting point for connecting to current research.

Overall, the analysis of real networks is facing a complex challenge to be able to cope with large, adaptive, multi-agent systems. Computational tools are limited by incomplete data sets and the basic complexity of real — and consequently dynamic — networks (Carley, 2001, p.12). It is precisely the weakness of detailed computational (algorithmic) solutions that suggests that more holistic models, ones that contain fundamental principles “combining the methodologies of social networks and computer science” (Ibid) along with other innovative world views are necessary.

Other Areas of Research

Significant lateral input will come from areas of inquiry outside the general sphere of applied telecommunications, electrical engineering, computer science, and sociology. Areas of research in hard science (especially cosmology, Quantum physics, thermodynamics, and biology), social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, media and culture studies, and philosophy), cognitive science, management and organizational studies, consciousness studies, bio-informatics, and bio-genetics among other alternative model systems provide fundamental inputs — further interrogating the efficacy and robustness of the model.

For example, recent trends in network-based sonic collaboration also touch on the real dynamics of perceptive and energized human relation as well as the specific contingencies of amplified telecommunications networks (Barbosa, 2003, p.53). This trans-disciplinary technical research and artistic production dates back to the mid-1970’s and the California-based League of Automatic Music Composers in Local Area Networks (Bischoff, 1978, p. 26).

Relevant areas of cognitive science research examines abstracted social (linguistic) levels of interaction as mapped over systems of knowledge acquisition and propagation in the process of creating models for the mind, consciousness, or intelligence. This field of research presents several interesting paradigms which inform the relationship between individual presence and collective/social existence.

Although there are some who reject the metaphor of genes holding and transferring ‘information’ as a causal source for evolutionary impulses (Griffiths, 2001, p. 6), recent developments in gene regulatory networks (GRN) modeling, a branch of systems biology (or bio-informatics) also provide some interesting insights into cellular systems which are not modeled simply as information-processing devices, but as distributed metabolic signal amplification systems that appear to function as emergent scale-free networks (Jeong, et al, 2000, p. 652). By examining the specific links in a metabolic network, it is possible to map biochemical reactions which may also be characterized by absolute energy (state) transfers which are, essentially, amplifiers. As this area of interest matures, it is likely that research into metabolic network systems will produce insights that can be productively carried back to social and technological network theory.

Quantum computation, as it relates both to real energy state analysis of nano systems and algorithmic computational models also explores relevant issues that consider real energy state relations as (digital) computational systems. These nano-systems exhibit parameters governing energy flows that are quite different from normal macro-scaled high- and low-voltage circuitry and may provide fundamental insight into energy dynamics.

General Quantum, as a fundamental energy-based model, portrays the universe as a space-time continuum in which energy fields are the phenomena underlying all observed reality. Quantum provides a provocative point-of-view that supersedes the limits of traditional mechanistic thinking. In this sense alone it serves as an important guide for moving the model beyond dominant mechanistic perceptions of reality.

Conclusion

There are many possible threads to examine in contemporary research around the concepts of amplified (tele)communications, networks, and human relation. Many of the traditional disciplinary boundaries as well as socio-cultural frames-of-reference are being re-formed by the rapid pace of research, development, and deployment of telecom solutions.

The dialectic of human vs machine is a bit dated, though, and represents a conservative conceptual space that has to be transcended — initially it is a convenient conceptual tool — but a more holistic consideration of that hybrid system, the techno-social system, as it exists within the continuum of relation, is necessary.

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

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

Concerning Particular Methodologies

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

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

Fabrication of Objects — Exploring the model of amplification suggests a material (electro-mechanical) fabrication practice which is something I did many years ago under the influence of my father, an engineer who was involved with, among other things, the development of radar at MIT during WWII. As an artist, though, I have developed a tentative relationship with the materialized art object over the last twenty years, a relationship which seeks to transcend the materiality through performative, ad hoc, and spontaneous actions, activities, and thus, practices. I have a substantial record of creating visual-sonic manifestations and happenings which will persists in various forms. Somewhere between these two impulses is where I would like to place part of my research.

Exploring and Establishing a Self-Reflexive Praxis — With the goal of establishing a sustainable framework for a critically-aware practice-based action, I prefer to focus my attentions on establishing a suite of relevant lived practices rather than generating products or even processes. As a methodology this requires an immersion in the way-of-going. Much of my sustained practice to date is about distributed connection, remote presence, and collaborative action which will form the armature of my research activities.

Basic Research — This will include, as noted previously, a trans-disciplinary examination of as many different systems for amplification both from a social as well as technical point-of-view. This will involve substantial reading and subsequent collation of precursor ideas and trends. As this has already been a research interest of mine, the ground-work is in place, and I simply need regular access to a library and the time and guidance to tie things together in a more formal and coherent way. I anticipate fundamental background research/exploration in computer science, circuit design; electronic, electric, and electrical systems, communications and network theory, bio-engineering, and other subjects as suggested above.

I very much would like to spend time at least some time (re)learning to write. Although I am an efficient and skilled copy-editor in English, and have extensive experience in putting words together in a variety of mediums, I feel that I could benefit from critical input into that process in relation to my total creative output.

Relations to UTS Research Contexts

Ongoing workshops and collaborative projects, well-established from my existing network, will enhance the international application of my research results as well as the integration of my research into existing UTS contexts. Without an insider’s knowledge of precise research tracks, following I reflect on possible overlaps in my existing experience base and current UTS possibilities. I am in direct contact with Prof. Norie Neumark who originally encouraged me to apply to the program and who would be my principal advisor. I know several CMAI associates and other UTS faculty already for some years. I look forward to the potential for energized dialogues on the ground should I undertake my research at UTS.

Transforming Cultures (TfC) / Centre for Media Arts Innovation

The opportunity of working with Prof. Norie Neumark and Prof. John Dale within the framework of the Centre for Media Arts Innovation is confirmed. I know several of the other researchers in CMAI personally which will open up potential cross-correlations of research.

Cultural transformation and innovation relies on the motivation to and capacity for change which is, in turn governed by how the techno-social system is structured to distribute and utilize energy (in the service of signal amplification among other needs). I believe the research goals that I have outlined here integrate well with several existing research projects.

Cosmopolitan Civil Societies (CCS)

Prior communication with Prof. Andrew Jakubowicz confirmed his interest in possible co-supervision (across CCS and CMAI) based on specific shared areas of interest within the CCS Research Center and my research at the intersection of techno-social systems and individual autonomy. I share a deep and critical interest in a number of themes that are core to the CCS program: those of integration, learning, and education, the facilitation of a sustainable civil society, the problematics of socio-cultural dislocation and change, and the impositional architecture of technological power structures.

For example, the project “Migrating Realities” (described below) explores many of the same questions of cultural participation and identity in our rapidly changing social milieu that are being examined in the “Information and Cultural Exchange” project. As a long-time ‘networker,’ I have a deep interest in establishing a creative practice that critically and from a socially active point of view engages contemporary technological implementation and explores its affects on daily life.

Timeline

Year 1 — Fundamental research and framing of the space of inquiry, ‘reverse engineering’ my ideas and connecting them to a wider field of existing ideas and concepts; conceptually framing potential creative activities, actions, or events.

Year 2 — Critically testing the resulting broad framework of ideas and actions in actual performative situations: application of ideas in the context of distributed sonic collaboration

Year 3 — Refining the performative ideas and presenting them in a culminating situation — a workshop or series of workshops.

Year 4 — Collation of results, and, to paraphrase Rilke, “Writing, writing, writing, through the day, through the night, through the day, writing, writing.”

Pertinent Ongoing Contexts

neoscenes — As a site for both documentation and creative output, I have updated and expanded the neoscenes site continuously since first deploying it in 1994. Many of the collaborative network projects that I either initiated or participated in are documented on the site. In support of this application is the page http://neoscenes.net/info/doc_proposal/app-suppport.php. (see http://neoscenes.net)

Migrating Realities / Migrating Academies — A collaborative project I am working on presently with Lithuanian, German, and French colleagues, dealing with the socio-cultural contingencies of identity/migration and creative action within the evolving and highly fragmented regime of emigration and immigration. I would like very much to explore this further in the Australian context, perhaps bringing some of the activities of our collaboration into the UTS scene. We had a conference, exhibition, and series of performances in Berlin in April 2008, a Lithuanian-German-English webzine, and a hard-copy book (ISBN 978-9955-834-01-4) which I co-edited. A part of this project is a collaboration “Migrating Academies” which just received significant EU funding — this November I will be facilitating part of a workshop with a group of students from the Vilnius Academy of Art, the Media Academy of Cologne, and the École European de l’Image on the subject of identity, dislocation, creative action, collaboration, and networks. (see http://www.migrating-reality.com/blog/)

aporee maps — A sonic/located-media project with a colleague, Udo Noll, an artist and programmer in Berlin. It is a flexible development platform for deployable located media and performance possibilities which I will be continuing work with. (see http://aporee.org/maps/)

Transmediale — as a participant in several distributed network events at prior Transmediale Festivals (’08 and ‘07) in Berlin, and with an established working relationship with the production team, I have been invited to facilitate the online portion of the Festival in ‘09. This is an ideal context for deploying a future project arising from my UTS research.

share.dj — as the ‘nomadic’ share.nomad node of this network of new media artists, I participate in a variety of projects that are both live and/or online. As a loose collective, we have run very successful live/online projects at numerous local and international venues including The Kitchen (NYC) and Transmediale (07), and are in the process of organizing a major event for Ars Electronica Culture Capitals next summer, pending the outcome of finalists jury. (see http://share.dj/)

NewForms ‘09 — I have been invited to run the only workshop/happening at this major media festival in Vancouver in September where I will be deploying the amplification concept for the first time in a full workshop/event form.

Writing — I have several existing writing projects going on, the primary is an evolving book “Energy of Being :: Dialogue of Creativity” which is an idiosyncratic and creative examination of an alternative world-view. I have two chapters completed. One of them, “Regime of Amplification :: A Primer” is a speculative essay which covers the core ideas of the research I wish to pursue at UTS. (see http://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/energy_of_being/regime.html)

Blogging — Online documentation of the research process will be maintained within the context of the “neoscenes travelog” blog – a 13-year-long process of visual-textual-sonic reflection on my practice: where I am, who I am with, and what I am doing. This public resource will continue to include a wide range of speculative expressions of process, subjective observations, autonomous manifestos, textual references, external resources, and suggestions for practices all in an accessible format. I have a sustained readership with hit-counts around 2000-3000/day and growing (see http://neoscenes.net/travelog/)

Teaching — As an experienced and innovative university educator positioned at the intersection of art and technology, I do hope to find opportunities for engaging the student population of UTS. I have an excellent network of personal/professional contacts around Australia as well as New Zealand and the Pacific Rim within higher education and the culture/new media sector which I will activate whenever possible for workshops, seminars, and collaborative projects. In a typical year (during the last 15 of them, at least), I run workshops or seminars at between ten and twenty cultural/educational research institutions, an activity that I will continue to promote. These dynamic practice-oriented events deeply explore aspects of techno-social systems that are positioned somewhere between technology and creative action. I will of course include the results of my UTS research in this context. (Given the global economic and energy situation, perhaps more in a Pacific Rim vs Euro-centric context, however!)

Having said that, I will certainly continue research and collaborative activities with my existing global network of collaborators and contacts. This includes ongoing textual dialogues within several online community networks on the topics of education, distributed systems (esp. educational and creative/collaborative), technology, and creativity (see resources below).

Pertinent Resources

Personal/Professional Network

As an integral part of my long-term creative praxis, I have established a substantial transdisciplinary network of individuals that cuts across many social and cultural borders. As both a source of and a destination for my creative energies, I draw this network into all aspects of my praxis.

Bibliography

I have accumulated a wide-ranging bibliography which informs my research during the last decade, and, as a resource, I will of course continue to refine and expand it. All references in this text refer to that bibliography. (see http://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/biblio.html)

Online communities / mailing lists / resources

I am a frequent poster on a number of mailing lists which explore the critical contexts of digital practices and the social consequences. Along with the lists, I am an active node in a number of distributed creative communities including:

bricolabs — as a participant in this global network of open-source social activists, I contribute regularly to discussions around sustainable new media practices.

Howard Rheingold’s brainstorms community — postings center around the use of technology in education and on techniques for developing distributed learning systems.

share.dj – a distributed network of more than 20 global urban nodes of community-based visual-sonic artists.

microsound – an active sonic arts community built up around common explorations of a wide variety of sound from field recording through granular synthesis.

OTiS/SiTO – a long-standing (and still vital!) visual-arts collective established online in 1993.

neoscenes travelog – this is a documentary and creative resource, a scratch-pad, musing-table, notebook with a regular global audience.

neoscenes projects (including a sustained network of former students) form a substantial resource base for distributed performance.

Other lists which I maintain a long-term presence include nettime, fibrecult, xchange, empyre, iDC, NICE, and ixi.