A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor's note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 which set life on another trajectory.]

1.0 Statement of Problem

1.1 Introductory note

Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. (more …)

“What is it?” we ask, meaning what is its name? This odd quirk of the human mind: Unless we can name things, they remain for us only half-real. Or less than half-real: nonexistent. A man without a name is nobody. A man’s name can become more important that his person. A plant, an animal, a thing without a name is no thing — nothing. No wonder we humans like to think that in the beginning was — the Word. What word? Any word. Any word at all, anything rather than the silence and terror of the nameless. — Edward Abbey

plowing (ploughing) through Abbey this time, after years since reading “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” seems dated, depressing, even dark. so much of the landscape that he passed through is evolved, so much of what he prognosticated about the Southwest, at the hands of corrupt politicians and developers has materialized like a cancer across the face of the land. the forever-expansion, development-is-good, it-creates-jobs mantra that is chanted by deeply unholy men (and women). bringing 4000+ square-foot pseudo-adobe MacMansions dotting the land with Hummers in every five-car garage. although there are places one might go and on a middle-scale — meaning the easily visible — local scale, to the uninitiated eye, the natural system seems untouched. but with any consideration of scientific data on atmospheric systems, plant and animal ecosystems, hydrologic systems are being irretrievably altered. what of the domination of a species which will destroy most of the other macro-species only to live shortly in an impoverished environment: soon to succumb to viral celebration in the host of hosts. definitely, catch it while you can. take the last road trips around before gas costs what it should and the only way to get out of Dodge will be on foot. and the only way to survive the plague is through a slow and costly counter-evolution.

at any rate, this IS a frog (possibly a Canyon Tree frog – Hyla arenicolor). but note the incredible coloration. the green exactly matches a particular lichen that grows on the granite in that area. the pinkish blush of the feldspars in the granite. there were four of them literally stuck to a large smooth boulder on Mint Wash. I was sitting opposite from them, having lunch with Marianne, about 6 feet (2 meters) away, and at first I thought they were phenocrysts in the granite, but then saw they were frogs. this particular one was the only one I could get close enough to make an image of, s/he was crouched on a relatively reasonable ridge. the other three were literally glued to vertical (overhanging!) smooth surfaces, but there was a 2-meter deep hole in the creek bed, full of water immediately below them. so, this one had to do. the beast is about 1.5 inches (3 cm) long.

Putting the pieces of the puzzle together, we find that real networks are governed by two laws: growth and preferential attachment. Each network starts from a small nucleus and expands with the addition of new nodes. Then these new nodes, when deciding where to link, prefer the nodes that have more links. These laws represent a significant departure from earlier models, which assumed a fixed number of nodes that are randomly connected to each other. But are they sufficient to explain the hubs and power laws encountered in real networks? — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

early morning departure. Frieder up hours before dawn as usual, Susi asleep. not too hard for me waking up. Light sleep on the before-travel night. some fast-moving image dreams that later skip-segue into closed eyes against the rising sun and the flashbacking shadows of trees flickering across rod-cone consciousness, triggering neuro-shock shivers to the system. icy streets have thawed after being salted. train on time. squeezed into my reserved seat by a large girl. two hours, change in Dortmund to the U-bahn, change in Apelebek to a bus, a short cold wait, arrive in plenty of time at the small airport. home to several of the extremely popular cheap airlines (http://www.germanwings.de, http://www.easyjet.com, http://www.wizzair.com, http://www.hla.de and http://airberlin.com) that are now flooding the Euro market. Prague for €UR40 (U$D48), could have gotten it for cheaper by €UR20 on different days. Cairo and a host of other Mediterranean destinations for €UR50. radical evolution in the market. probably won’t last too long — and might even be a strategy to get people accustomed to easy/frequent air travel, then stick them later. it is clearly having an effect on the Deutsche Bahn long-distance service and the legacy carriers. DB standard prices are extremely high, but they now offer quite some deals depending on the destination. Prague from Bremen was still €UR92 so I saved about €UR10 taking the train to Dortmund and flying. getting back will save me 50 €UR as I’m going to Köln: every little bit. in this corner of extremity and lack of fiscal consequence.

arrived, baggage somewhat delayed (the Lufthansa flight sharing the carousel was first). cold. catching the bus, focusing on the names being spoken by the automated announcer, I mistakenly got off three stops too soon and had to catch a tram to the Metro instead. duh. making connections, clean, crisp, fast. get to the National Theater, re-read the instructions. whoa, not a bad location. the security guard waiting for me, speaking rapid Czech. right on the river, center of the old town, across the street from the Theater, penthouse, the top floor of the Film Academy — for a view one has to poke a head out of the skyLights. sharing the very large five-room flat with a British screenwriter.

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

leaving Bremen after one of the most energizing workshops ever. so good to be back on a roll. inspiring conversations and interactions. crowded train, standing at the exit door for an hour, ipodding, staring out the window until it’s so dark I only see myself, change trains at Hamburg Dammtor and catch up with Christian on the way home from work. exhausted. but energized. the weekend is slow and relaxation-full. Chris takes a shot of Steffi and I before I head to Finland.

Sven asks me to write something about the radiostadt1 stream from last fall. so, I generate the following brief spin on that special living-room-to-live performance venue that I enjoyed while hanging in Colorado:

Thanks to the fat-pipe running from the University of Colorado research grid to the neoscenes living room in Boulder, Colorado, USA, along with access to a Helix server that the university hardly ever used for live streaming, neoscenes made about 10 major live audio/video streaming performances wearing only underwear and socks while drinking a cup of tea. (sorry, no photo’s ;-) “Bring it on home!”

It’s a bit strange, sitting on an office chair rescued from the dumpster parked on horrible-cheap 1980′s shag carpeting, pumping out an acoustic signal to a situated live urban-drinking audience halfway around the world. How to get the groove on? The inspiration of the moment has to be local and global at the same time. The senses of the body have to pick up every shred of remote input to judge the reaction, and with only those minuscule bits of evidence plow ahead with faith in connection. “I’m thinking about you!” Concentration, attention, focus are all keywords in the process of throwing embodied energies from here to there, across a network that is defined by thin wires snaking across thousands of kilometers. Connection is where the Self and the Other actually make energized contact, whether it is bridging 2 meters or 20,000 kilometers. neoscenes gets up early (GMT-7), studies the possibilities, brews some tea, maps out a course of action, and dives into the work-play.

First, gather stores of internal energy, then facilitate a material infrastructure, and then, with care-full intensity, send that energy out into the network.

The gathering process is critical. It starts with listening and looking while moving through life, an awareness of the surrounding fields of flow. Keeping the “be here now” above the need to re-produce history. Over time and space neoscenes accumulates a deep archive from this lived process of looking and listening, be-ing. These fragments are a very real energy bank of electromagnetic impulses waiting for the proper moment to be re-configured and revealed. It is from this archive that the remix arises. Serendipitous elements are facilitated in every performance — unstable real-time inputs that reflect the energy of the moment. With the proper concentration, these are combined with a flow from the archive, and whatever remote vibe is coming from the receivers at the other end. It is impossible to guess the result. Except in the deep space of psycho-spiritual anticipation.

Configuring the technological infrastructure is a time-intensive and energy consumptive process — and it’s important not to run out of energy doing that, else the actual performance suffers. Fighting the technology is an old story, not a very nice one, but it comes with this kind of work, it comes with any work involving technology (which raises the question, what exactly IS technology? Well, maybe it’s whatever means any human uses to reconfigure their internal energy in order to pass that energy along to an Other.) A balance between twiddling with tools and the ensuing energy loss must be precisely found. Simple = saving energy for the communicative act itself, not worshipping the binary coders. Creativity happens in unstable autonomous zones.

Finally, the performance. The flow, transmission. Point-to-point. Real time. Is the receiver open to the right frequency? Is the transmission to narrow? Where is the groove, especially when the sonic space is outside rhythm and rhyme. When it is full of Ghosts of the past. Speaking tongues gone by. From ether to ether to ether. And while passing through bodies again and again.

You had to be there. Revolution is a live praxis. But you can still be here now, in which case, you can pick up the vibe still ringing from radiostadt 1, through the trans-temporal ether.

canyon face in there. juniper there, grass, cedar, sage, rock, rock face. having a gravity. yesterday taking another side slot-canyon, up and up to gain the bench-top over-looking the campground. find two un-matched halves, elk antlers, 7-points each, so, 14-point animals. one almost as tall as Loki. after seeing the bighorn sheep kill earlier in the day, lower jaw crushed, nose chewed away. the mountain lions have things pretty good, except for the constant interference of humans into their wide-patterned space. Loki playing in the dirt. part of the time, this seems problematic, the play seems to be generated from a vacant boredom that I can’t fill, nor would really choose to, other times, it seems to be holy. god-inspired, god-directed, god-sanctioned play that is of evolution-leaping intensity compared to the Game-Boy. what a stupid vapid name for an object devoid of any redeeming spiritual value. a generation of gamers swallowing simulations, and the entertained. faugh, what will come of that? everything is boring. speed is fun. simulation is way better than the real thing. not sure that this auto-adapter is running right. worked on the plane, but now, not able to concentrate anyway, on anything, too stressed about being a dull parent. maybe starting to count days until this phase is over. but next week back to school. teaching again. reading Lemke’s draft of a concept of “traversals” — recalling a flash of text that dropped into one of the Solstice videos that I made in Iceland. traverse no zenith. so it goes. battery runs low. no satellite uplink anyway, so bloggish reflections are useless. darkness falls. I will sleep on the ground tonight, and hope for the best. something nervous, but not for any good reason. with towering face of sandstone leaping to converge with rotating Milky Way.

first the Solstice streams by, then Christmas comes and … goes. reading an old notebook, where

at the Solstice, the Summer Solstice, all things are full and penetrated by Light, in winter they have only their intrinsic, internal radiation. they pull themselves back, they are pulled back to rest, turbulently, entirely, within themselves.

hardly notice the evolution of winter here, hardly notice the fully waned Light. it still heats the flat between 1200 and 1500, then down behind the mountains shortly thereafter. and winter comes. thankful for some time off.

new bike, the Nashbar 5000 now 15 or so years old. still running, in need of some new parts, though, so I will contribute it to some charity. when in Amurika, upgrade. to what end? newness (an energized statement against entropic decay). but it requires an energy input. constantly. that’s what makes gold so desirable, that it requires almost no input over time to retain its luster. you only have to get it.

Education is a process that necessarily entails an interpersonal (not merely interactive) relationship between people-student and teacher (and student and student) that aims at individual and collective self-knowledge. (Whenever people recall their educational experiences they tend to remember, above all, not courses or subjects or the information imparted but people, people who changed their minds or their lives, people who made a difference in their developing sense of themselves. It is a sign of our current confusion about education that we must be reminded of this obvious fact: that the relationship between people is central to the educational experience.) Education is a process of becoming for all parties, based upon mutual recognition and validation and centering upon the formation and evolution of identity. The actual content of the educational experience is defined by this relationship between people and the chief determinant of quality education is the establishment and enrichment of this relationship. — David F. Noble

the raw suspicion that stability is a straw dog. (a term that Anthony first raised into my consciousness). in that conversation in a bar-restaurant somewhere on the Delaware River a long time ago. wondering what happened to him, no words from him in many, 18 moons ago. while now in the moment, the Leonids rain down from the sky. he was supposed to be going to Flagstaff, the wanderer that he is.

the last morning of the Media Lab workshop, I have something of a microscopic revelation in the number six tram. understanding that I am talking deeply about the power of presence as a creative strategy and practice, traveling around Europe preaching this, and all the while, at the same time, leaving my little boy behind. a little boy who is not so little anymore. everything seems impossible for this family. relationships are crushed and fragmented, distorted and removed, applied over distance and imbalanced. hmmmmmm.

another thread that came from the workshop this week were characterizations about the externalization of memory and the problem of re-presentation. with memory removed from the embodied self, there is an erosion of personal autonomy (the external localized memory is the technological network — which is not a network after all, but a lateral hierarchy). the act of placing memory externally reifies what would be an internally dynamic condition of evolutionary presence. and contributes to an ethical or even moral slide. (assuming that a static condition of memory is problematic — haven’t meditated on that one so much.)

here in Jyväskylä, dinner with Niina, finding out about the local situation (email never provides enough communications spectrum), in a hotel on campus by the lake. seminar tomorrow. a late call, like those many others, of the sadness I have caused to an Other. by not respecting innocence. and not providing the right dreams.

loop loop loop. the eye is taken in, the eye is taken in. the mind is numbed, the mind is numbed. replay.

I end up using the phrase “ancestral home” though I have little connection to such a reality. heading to Scotland for the first time ever. where on the Isle of Skye that generations of clan MacKenzie lived and died. I know next to nothing about them, except for the geographic proximity. and the name. and a few clouded memories of those old ones that I met as a child, ones who still could speak Gaelic, and who had been born in that land, only to come to the West of the Atlantic when life got too hard in the East. sailing west, south and west to find a new place to be. immigrants. like everybody, as though the change from immigrant to native would erase all. land without pasts.

and, now the travel has a new, sharper, edge. after TWA 800, and now with the World Trade center in smoldering ruin. reviewing some videotape from when Loki and I made a visit there earlier this year. the elevator ride, buying an expensive ice cream and seeing the free cheesy film promoting New York City. and seeing the diorama of the City from Wall Street to Mid-Town, with the north end of the island relegated to two dimensions of tempera on the wall. that diorama, a voodoo city, perished last week. what next?

all the while through the media rain, the trees outside change color. the birch lining some of the grid streets change with clusters of leaves going bright yellow, embedded in a matrix of green, and at the end of a week, the matrix is yellow, turning brown, with a scattering of green. often consider that I should document it, but beyond picking up one yellow and one green leaf a week ago, I have done nothing. video does not adequately record. so, I just look as I walk from point to point in the town. watching the change, understanding that as with the change since last week, that life is constantly in change. time slipping quicker. somehow I have come to something fundamentally different in my process, my awareness. that will affect both internal and external … blah blah blah. so on .

landed at Heathrow, flying over the English countryside. not since 1996 have I been here, or has it been more recent. no, 1996. in the opening salvos of this travelog. five-and-a-half years ago. already. this time only as a transfer passenger. transforming passenger, transformed passenger. passively carried for a fee. on the way to. and a workshop tomorrow and the next three days. each morning. another one of these confluences of humans. serendipity, surrender. being the passive activist. interfering. with certain systems (that I should better leave to their own progression and devolution. I can only be who I am. I like this fatalistic bent.

head-cold, and only 36 more hours here. looking at another year of being elsewhere. adding fictions to fictions here and there. sheesh. looking around as if from the bottom of a well, or at least with two toilet paper rolls stuck to the eyes. no binocular vision here. just monocular reception. nothing correlated. all things appear as they are. and are not things, but manifestations. more and more I run across texts that confirm my suspicions. how to take away the toilet rolls and move, viewing and being in a world that is unrestricted?

churning all that has sensually been absorbed, along with that-which-is-there-inside, and hunting for the evolutionary keys. start the car and drive away. there are those venting points for energy that has been gathered, but I know almost nothing about this, and recognize myself as less than a novice on a spiritual pathway. in some way even a blasphemer, as I know, but do not practice. as being buried alive.

chop chop. fever reminds me of every text I have ever read. flickering by the inside of the eyelids. murmuring from upstairs, a dinner party, and I feel other-worldly. not here, but on my way somewhere else. mind floating in a messy sewage of misguided inputs. and ports are still open, waiting for the vessel to swamp and slowly settle to the bottom. nothing changes. thoughts travel large distances to people in many places, but this is useless exercise. if all the universe is aware of all the rest of the universe, and all things react to all other things and events, simultaneously, then what can be done that is not already?

moving along. with a short stop/lunch with folks at the Computer Science / Media Department of the University of Lübeck who will be involved in the establishment of the International School of New Media that Hubertus has been working on in the last couple years. they will move into a nice new location, the Media Docks, immediately adjacent from the old town. more of the old Hanseatic traditions. so it goes.

heading for Copenhagen via the boat at Puttgarten.

there is no voice that can speak life. but to get into a dance with the Void. I have not changed. at all. no evolution, no learning. only going. parsing input data, but it is routed to the same boxes. as ever. no cross-over networks, re-routed neurons. learning systems. knee-jerking. hard-wired. why no escape?

smoke rising from farm fires in the Danish countryside. and in my gaze there is a reach into the terrain’s history. looking for mounds, barrows, and the “holm gards”: reading the “Heimskringla” epic of the Age of Vikings on my PalmPilot. simulation.

have to write to Marcel to see if he remembers what I said about networks in Zurich — at some point I made a short statement, and in the moment, thought it was very apropos, especially when I observed that everyone in the entire room paused to write it down. but I have since forgotten what it was! “a network is…” or “a network isn’t…” gees.

musings. a chaotic class session. people displeased. people struggling to have autocratic decisions made for them. rather than making the decisions themselves. from fear. this devolution process that I undertake in class is always traumatic for participants who expect and want only the kind of education that has kept them powerless and loving it. taking control without an agenda leads to anarchy. but a movement through different relations of power in “the classroom” is a transformative process. almost without fail (unless the student has already been through it consciously and is ready to move to a more daring state of interaction. like the relational dialogue which is friendship!

all week submerged in digital things. recoding to mp3. adding to this massive archive. each year, resolutions and accuracies and the ability to fool the mind and the eye into believing that what we create digitally has some indelible relationship with the Truth. the possible negativity of this illusory de-evolution is further obscured by linguistic shifts happening with a frequency and amplitude spectrum of a jet-fuel A turbo formula nitro Pratt&Whitney revving in the starting line up. who cares? juggle-not! using old language and new language bits keep the self stuck, cut free and use only new things. instead of “cut free” (when was the last time you were tied with rope to a point?) the New Self says “I have now three SUV’s.” this translates to complete freedom to those who buy into that worldview. but maybe it is itself only an illusion that this is a prevailing worldview. public opinion is a synthesized meme, knowledge-bit. not arising from the real life of anecdotal information, the real life of birth, death and just about everything else that happens in between to each of us.

so Mom calls with the news that Janet is in the hospital. since Monday. remoteness increases when the vulnerability of life is revealed through small events. FINALLY getting around to exploring the TAZ (Tactical Autonomous Zone) of Hakim Bey. and I am astonished to find it a textual mapping of many of my natural procedures, tactics, and ways of going. somehow I am stung by the fact the textual encoding of such ways is held to such a higher degree of regard than the praxis itself — this is some characteristic of the hierarchy of language and the priesthood. (why REAL music is inevitably dangerous to READERS). should I be stung? nah, don’t give a … fine that he is able to poeticize about life that way, taking energy from that way of living and inject into language, that is a special talent. but his concept of psychic nomadism outlines a path that is more than familiar.

Vital in shaping TAZ reality is the concept of psychic nomadism (or as we jokingly call it, “rootless cosmopolitanism”). Aspects of this phenomenon have been discussed by Deleuze and Guattari in Nomadology and the War Machine, by Lyotard in Driftworks and by various authors in the “Oasis” issue of Semiotext(e). We use the term “psychic nomadism” here rather than “urban nomadism,” “nomadology,” “driftwork,” etc., simply in order to garner all these concepts into a single loose complex, to be studied in light of the coming-into-being of the TAZ. “The death of God,” in some ways a de-centering of the entire “European” project, opened a multi-perspectived post-ideological worldview able to move “rootlessly” from philosophy to tribal myth, from natural science to Taoism– able to see for the first time through eyes like some golden insect’s, each facet giving a view of an entirely other world.

But this vision was attained at the expense of inhabiting an epoch where speed and “commodity fetishism” have created a tyrannical false unity which tends to blur all cultural diversity and individuality, so that “one place is as good as another.” This paradox creates “gypsies,” psychic travellers driven by desire or curiosity, wanderers with shallow loyalties (in fact disloyal to the “European Project” which has lost all its charm and vitality), not tied down to any particular time and place, in search of diversity and adventure… This description covers not only the X-class artists and intellectuals but also migrant laborers, refugees, the “homeless,” tourists, the RV and mobile-home culture — also people who “travel” via the Net, but may never leave their own rooms (or those like Thoreau who “have traveled much — in Concord”); and finally it includes “everybody,” all of us, living through our automobiles, our vacations, our TVs, books, movies, telephones, changing jobs, changing “lifestyles,” religions, diets, etc., etc.

Psychic nomadism as a tactic, what Deleuze & Guattari metaphorically call “the war machine,” shifts the paradox from a passive to an active and perhaps even “violent” mode. “God”‘s last throes and deathbed rattles have been going on for such a long time–in the form of Capitalism, Fascism, and Communism, for example–that there’s still a lot of “creative destruction” to be carried out by post-Bakuninist post-Nietzschean commandos or apaches (literally “enemies”) of the old Consensus. These nomads practice the razzia, they are corsairs, they are viruses; they have both need and desire for TAZs, camps of black tents under the desert stars, interzones, hidden fortified oases along secret caravan routes, “liberated” bits of jungle and bad-land, no-go areas, black markets, and underground bazaars.

These nomads chart their courses by strange stars, which might be luminous clusters of data in cyberspace, or perhaps hallucinations. Lay down a map of the land; over that, set a map of political change; over that, a map of the Net, especially the counter-Net with its emphasis on clandestine information-flow and logistics–and finally, over all, the 1:1 map of the creative imagination, aesthetics, values. The resultant grid comes to life, animated by unexpected eddies and surges of energy, coagulations of light, secret tunnels, surprises. — Hakim Bey

it IS my praxis. maybe I have missed the expressive techniques of radicalization, but the other side says that radicalization is not needed when the act is revolutionary. the weight of dialogue tips any scale set to compare the volumetric ratio of act to act. what can you compare it to anyway? murder, mayhem, rape, pillage, what violent act of person against human or human-made agent of the oppressive state compares in psychic strength to the dialogue. wars end this way, wars begin this way. Bey misses this somehow, despite his penetrating search of self and brain-stem reflexes. his categories of interaction miss the personal and direct — almost always he is caught up with the imaginary collective both as the object of critique and the object of ultimate continuous transformation. the self and the Other is a conglomerate, a mass, a class of things. hmmmm. finish up with the Doctoral application to Media Lab. Timo comes by last night to the office to look over the application and research proposal with me, and seems to be pleased with it. crossing paths with perceived strong intellect, I at once have a small defensiveness rise in gut, but realize this is worth nothing, and open-ness is worth everything, disperse this and return to living and see that there are significant parallel pathways of thinking. the Dhao speaks loud. straw dogs run away. and, as Anthony said once, it ain’t the Dhao Jones Industrial we are talking about …

deep dreams of transformation and dislocation. solutions in the near and far future are clear, but for each solution there is an inherent pain. heartache. that will have to be faced and sublimated into the action of living. I am not aware of systems that can simply remove that heartache, except for time. although even that treatment does not erase the physiological effects of such sensations. mending broken hearts. or of the possibility of life renewing itself, rediscovering, reconnecting under circumstances that are more auspicious and conducive to (r)evolutionary survival.

Man puts the longest distances between him in the shortest time. He puts the greatest distances behind himself and thus puts everything before himself at the shortest range. Yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is least remote from us in point of distance, by virtue of its picture on film or its sound on the radio, can remain far from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not in itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness.– Martin Heidegger

on the above note, couldn’t project energies any longer into this space, but days have pulled me forward through nights as Rilke’s rider, “riding, riding, through the day, through the night, through the day, riding, riding, riding, through the night.” and threads build into a new fabrics to wear as old ways get worn pressed between body and outer beings. too many things happening for me NOT to be noting some of them. case I forget what happens now, off in some future time, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe when this medium itself is not readable anyway. creating archeological ruins in the moment, of the moment. head has been full even eyes can’t see sometimes now, thought-forms dragging along despite outside influence. or just accumulating. (summer is a time of storing and accumulating, and it is already gone.) surrounded by successful people. why is success important? it seems to have a deep evolutionary reading. having or lacking the tools for survival. strong body, intelligence, creativity, cleverness, adaptability, conserving resources for lean times, positioning the self (security) properly when the body declines.

no celebration here. just fatigue soaking deep in to the body. celebrating a revolution? no way. and no Mix-Master de-Light ramming of content down any local body’s constricted vocabulary projector. no bodies care lies still, encased in streams of spiral-wrapped conduits, snaking, (no fixed address), but a carrier. tired of things to carry. it slid into my burnt awareness to day, wandering over to school, second time in 20 minutes, fuming, that a nomad takes no prisoners. makes no documents, and tells stories only about others, not himself, to strangers. no form of permanent record, except organic and portable memory. no weight. gravity is a nomads enemy.

some ways, lost the fight this week, and won the battle? workshops, each has an internal and external dynamic. this one began concentrated and gradually dissipated. students scheduling seemed to be the primary problem, there was always something else to be busy with. after a few days, I feel like being an entertainer, when the jokes run out, the audience splits. competing for attention, okay, a childish notion to begin with, but when it applies to an educational situation where I am calling on the students to be participants rather than volumes of empty space passively waiting to be filled with knowledge — this seems to be the less desirable option for them. far easier to be passive in education than active. change is a brutal force that, in the end, ushers in death to the table of the living. but stasis is a death-in-life that denies the sensual realities of daily living. this dichotomy, death following life (following death following life) and death-in-life seems core to the process of revolution. facing the bardo of becoming. each and every day, letting the movement, the falling towards falling towards the mass of the world, acceleration. if the speed doesn’t change, time compresses. or Light strikes more directly into the soul.

long breakfast first with Gustav Metzger, then at a changing table with a whole crew of folks. talking, talking. Sam tells that he saw the “One Day of My Life in a Box” show in Bangkok two years ago. very cool. jump to the rail station with Richard Barbrook, Shuddhabraka, and Roya Jakoby — Roya and I were both going to Köln, so we caught the train together and spoke about many things. ZKM seems to be having continuing problems as a creative nexus with a heavy weight of German bureaucratic intensity hanging over it, insulating it from the revolution of networks or so.

into the NextFiveMinutes conference. I have been burned out for much of the time for some reason, almost catching a cold yesterday evening, then this morning, spraining my back with the most minimal movement zipping up my suitcase, I wasn’t even bending over. scared the shit outta me. my panel presence (Tactical Education/Media Competence) was shortly after, and that went quite well, but by mid-afternoon I hobble back the the hotel, barely able to walk because of the sciatic pain. missed an appointment with Nan which I was quite looking forward to, not to mention several dialogues with new contacts. really don’t believe it, that I have done something serious. been stretching all afternoon and evening between bouts resting in bed. nothing else to do! Faugh! miss a dinner with an interesting artist. following are notes for the Tactical Education presentation (on the neoscenes occupation project):

back in the east. of Finland. on the western border of Russia. a border drawn partly by the movements of the Winter War that began sixty years ago last week. where Russian bombers hit Vypori at 0915 in the morning. they drove deep into Finland, but were later driven back, and the borderline was repeatedly re-drawn by the fortunes of war. first the Finns were supported and allied with the Nazis (the Whites), and then by the end of the war, they (the Reds) had turned against the Germans who subsequently withdrew through Lapland into Norway, leaving behind total devastation — the scorched-earth policy in action. the city of Rovaniemi in south-central Lapland was 99% destroyed. There was a brutal internal Civil War between the Reds and Whites prior to WWII, something that almost tore the country apart before the great General Mannerheim (White) won over the Reds. Independence Day, December 6, is still a day for old people, especially the soldiers to remember the suffering and be remembered in solemn ceremonies around the country. living memory is the word. different than in Amurika, where the Revolution and the fight for independence is only cause for over-eating barbecued food and watching fireworks while eating watermelon in the dead heat of summertime. dead memory. big difference. that life and living is so much more important than any material constructs or mental/social constructs like history and language and institutions and other imposed and largely abstract constellations of apparent energy. nothing real. snowing and very cold these days. it makes the town and the landscape look like a very idyllic picture postcard of White Christmas. heavy frosting on gently curved fir and birch trees, reposed for the chill. rocks and streets alike white, most form obscured. the river, split in to two narrow channels in the middle of town, both of which are dammed for a hydro station, one a bit further downstream than the other so that from a bridge over a narrow gorge, one can look upstream and see one small dam structure, with the dry gorge below full of fluffy white shapes. the same bridge passes over the river immediately upstream of the turbine intake, and there the water is flowing fast, strangely smooth, with harmonic anti-waves with an amplitude of half a meter and a wavelength of, say, five meters, migrating upstream against the current. today, in the thick falling snow and deep chill, the water there has a scummy skin of thin slush onto which is mixed swirls of fresh snow. last night I seemed to come down with a minor sinus cold that has lasted the day, though with no serious symptoms. generally I throw off these things in less than 24-hours, though more generally, I simply don’t get sick. back to the water thing. but this week I had two very bad nights of sleep, for some reason, and that, combined with long, badly-timed waits for the bus between the teachers’ house and the college, and early mornings, wore me down a bit. was thinking that the teaching here in Imatra stretches my toughness — and actually it is quite easy conditions, but I have gotten just too soft. ain’t no hungry barbarian.

Last night I am meditating on the way things are going. For some moments I ponder the possibility that my mind has passed across a walkway — one where it is possible that I cannot return back along, back to the territory that I have left, except through total stupidity and insensitivity, or being human. Scribbling on paper I write:

Then I am reminded:

The relation between thought and word is a living process; thought is born through words. A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow. — Lev Semenovich Vygotskiĭ

I need to meditate more on the relation of thought, word, and action…

I send a proposal to Christa for the Ars work coming up:
word-dialogue-Light-revolution-action: breaking the glass

The history of mediation is also the history of humans seeking to lessen the impact of raw nature and human aggression on their physical being. Language may be thought of as a primal mediating technology, and in that sense, the further mediations imposed on communications between humans — those mediations that are more commonly referred to as technology, are merely additional obstructions to understanding that overlie language. None-the-less, in this moment, it is still possible to speak, and to listen. At the very same moment that mediation stresses our attempts of attentive presence with the Other, it becomes more imperative to engage in Dialogue and in the creation of spaces in which Dialogue might flourish. Dialogue stimulates genesis, transformation, and revelation in life — it is a revolutionary art itself when in critical juxtaposition to silence. Dialogue, as pure expression of heart and soul, is the core of all meaningful activism.

This talk will explore the be-ing of Dialogue, the stresses of mediation, and our presence in the noumenal world.

Retrospecting on the disheveling week of near-constant stimulation and activity that was the Ars Electronica FLESH FACTOR event. Five hours sleep was a miracle which was as remote from reality as was the idea of downtime. A thrashing whoosh of flesh factors and virtual emulations and emanations and emissions and manifestations accompanied with the appropriate techno-beats, subtronic and subsonic throbbing, visceral vibrations and skittering cathode-ray-tube radiations. I spent a vast portion of my time within the comfortable, though frenetic, Open-X space where something of a revolution took place. A revolution of interface design between audience and artist, participant and observer, creator and consumer, networker and networker. As far as I know or can ascertain in discussion with other networking artists, Open-X is a first as far as restructuring the relationship between artist and audience — although even this pronouncement is a rather näive and surficial reduction. The space was occupied by about 50 networking-artists working on a variety of projects from finished web-projects, to live web-radio, to collaborative events (like our net.sauna), and a full-tilt live documentation of the entire festival. I should point out that this term networking-artist is something of a misnomer, or, at least, a scraping bow to the traditionally relegated identifications of this and that. Previous to this event in the heritage of conference, traditional paradigms have absolutely prevailed for electronic media festivals, exhibitions, and symposium. I came away from the festival feeling virtually invigorated and physically completely wiped-out. The 18-hour flight from Linz to Frankfurt to Washington to Denver was almost total torture for my back. I was constantly checking the count-down timer on my watch, the seconds tripping by far too slowly for me to remember anything through the constant hot-nails in the lower back. In the last hour, I got to digging my fingernails into my palms to make me forget the pain in my back.

Faculty meeting. First day of the Critical Thinking class. It seems that the bureaucracy at CU has become much more convoluted. The freshman class is massive and evidently there are not enough real places to put all the bodies. Funding for the university as a whole seems to have contracted, squeezing the administration into a preservation state and the faculty between hard stones. How it goes and goes. I retain the status of observer, comparing notes with other systems, other times, and other places. Life in Amurika seems hard and getting harder. Not measured by wealth, although that seems to be a complicating factor for many people. Hard to see where it ends or changes or evolves — de-evolution is the most obvious solvent. Lies and repeated introspection.

logfile

The intro IRC test session was interesting. Willa showed up on her lunch break, Robbin, one of the PORT curators dropped in, and Terhi, from Helsinki appeared. There were some minor technical hiccups, but generally thing worked out. Josephine had some trouble, but it ended up that she was on the wrong network, and so couldn’t find us. I stay indoors all day. Why is it that I don’t want to go out. I should. But IceLand has made completely abhor being cold. Now, if it was 75F or hotter, I would be out. Shirt off, hat on. Sun screen on my poor over-exposed nose. But it is chilly out, and I can’t make myself go out. Whatever. I had dreams again last night, but they are lost in the brilliance of the sun rising up over Mingus Mountain across the valley. It is especially bright because of all the snow. Flagstaff, to the north got up to 40 inches of snow and is still held in that slow embrace. Now I watch the Simpsons. What am I doing this for? My back is trashed sitting in the lab, I don’t have a good chair in there, and I think that is the main problem with my back. And so it goes. Fragments from public television:

His body is strong, and he loves it
The man looks across the gray floor and sees the end of his life
He calls her and says Mom I love you very much
He thinks about the moment he stops breathing
I feel so Light I feel so fortunate
Introducing the survivors I see all these things
My work is that Dialogue
I have I don’t think I want to leave, I’m only 42-years-old
Where will I lay down? Who cares?
Thank you for saying that to me I’ll remember that when I am wracked with pain An interesting, vital dance that will say everything I have learned from the survivors
Diagnosis does that
Fear is the place that I can stand where I can say I am here I love the blues, I love to dance I fear pain I want to cross over I want to cross over But I’m too small — Bill T. Jones

Adrianne posts me this excerpt of a review she has written about Blast for January’s Intelligent Agent — it includes:

_John Hopkins_, photographer and writer, proves an active theorist/theory activist as an artist. By arranging one-to-one conversations between himself and others, he performs “talking” events all over the world. John sees one-to-one conversation as the only form of revolution left in the world. John provided a series of dinners; one with each blast5drama Editor. No agenda or conversational menu was presented – creating an empty space between one participant and the other which, in turn promotes a certain discomfort, accompanied by a strong urge to flail about demanding criteria. But one realizes in time that the experience exists in a state of being without identification tagging, allowing something both natural and definitive to happen between people via talking. Because he can bear the consequences of not imposing any structure or rationale on an event, John’s work, in a way, evokes the genre of outsider art.

I am grateful that she takes the time and energy to not only support my work, but to actively frame it in within the context of her prodigious and ongoing experience in the arts.

Flying in yesterday to this place from NYC. Been back in the USSA (as the Beatles would say) for a week now, longer. Too much movement to make any reflections or thoughts here … And dial-up access is expensive too. Spanish moss hanging from the trees, a palm in the back yard. I am in the South. It has been 15 years since I’ve been down this way in the US. It is different. I am in a different place. Last week, Helsinki, then NYC, and now here. I feel that I should be mining these cultural juxtapositions — to derive a special knowing from the differences and similarities. But I hardly have the time. I suppose simply showing a sequence of images — as I photograph all the time (well, only totaling 20-30 rolls of Tri-X 135-36 in a year) — is the only way… Savannah. I make a small foray out to meet Alyssa at an opening — paintings by the Vice-Chancellor of the College of Art and Design where she is teaching in the Fine Metals department. I walked down largely empty streets in the approaching twiLight. People take the form of small phantoms seen down leafy sidewalk tunnels. TwiLight and dawn are critical times to discover the true face of a city. Transition times. The xenon-halide street-Lights slowly take over the atmosphere and the huge live-oak trees dripping in Spanish moss transform into flat volumes with the sheen of vinyl kitchen wallpaper. The half moon — with Venus hanging nearby — was set in a clear sky, the color of which I couldn’t really decide. It changed too quickly. No more high-latitude molasses-slow sunsets. Here in the South, darkness comes fast, and these transitions are only momentary glimpses deep into the soul of the Place. I wandered through a Park where the honored and illustrious dead historians and Sons of the Revolution are buried, strange texts were posted here and there in the form of Brass plaques explaining the significance of the moldering bones below. Massive live-oaks rested in their own gravitational field, acorns escaping at terminal velocity to be ground to a powder below on the sidewalk. I saw inside a third-floor window the skin of a boa-constrictor nailed to the wall. The refreshments at the opening featured Petit-Fours, Iced-Tea, and Caesar Salad dressing with vegetable cuttings and cheese. Meeting some of Alyssa’s colleagues, four of us left for a sushi restaurant appropriately called Kyoto in the strip-malled suburbia that has spread outside the perimeter of the original old-town sector. Remarkably, it was packed with 20-something Georgians. Animatedly consuming raw fish as though, well, as though, well, I thought I was back in West LA, back in the early 80′s when sushi bars were it. Waves move slowly and fast across Amurika, depending on local conditions. The cross-walk warning signs sometimes feature a woman-figure being pushed along by a man-figure holding her tightly by the arm. The epitome of Southern Chivalry, making sure She makes it across the dangerous crossing … So it goes. Sounding a little cynical at the moment, I suppose, diving into the minutia of the Place. But I feel like I need to know something about this Place. Maybe for the stupid reason that it is my country somehow. But it feel as impenetrable as ever. The structure as elusive as the life and death of the oak trees which, Alyssa tells me, are reputed to take 150 years to grow up, 150 years to live, and 150 years to die. As I cross Amurika, all things are inscrutable. I cannot move beyond the surface of wooden houses, storefronts, and the exteriors of automobiles. Purposes seem hidden and congested. There remains nothing clear except the moonLight and Venus. Venus, governing Love, the most inscrutable of all. I stay up writing this evening because on the ground floor there is a party proceeding, a dog barking in the back yard (next to the palm tree), and so it goes. Next I go to find my own earplugs. To sleep the night. I will refine these notes tomorrow. And I have a small angst attack with the amount of email I should be undertaking. Too many to talk with, and I haven’t the concentration to do it … More later.